


The Rule of Two

by Himboskywalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Shmi Skywalker, Jealous Anakin, Knight Anakin Skywalker, M/M, Mutual Pining, No Ruusan Reformation Jedi Order, No Sith Rule of Two, No Underage Sex, Padawan Anakin Skywalker, Pining, Prophecy, Sith Empire, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Switching, Underage Masturbation, alternative jedi order, posessiveness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23607547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himboskywalker/pseuds/Himboskywalker
Summary: Two sons of sunsin one soul bound.Two risen sonswhen power crownedin light of daycasts dark away.Anakin Skywalker and his mother are saved from slavery by Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi and brought to the Jedi Temple to live in peace and sanctuary.Anakin swears to train as a knight and follow in the footsteps of his saviors and hopes to one day follow the man he calls hero. But padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi earns the soulmark that brands him as half the dyad of an ancient prophecy and Anakin lives in fear of forever being cast in the shadow of the other foretold chosen one.
Relationships: Asajj Ventress/Quinlan Vos (Background), CC-5052 | Bly/Aayla Secura (background), Cliegg Lars/Shmi Skywalker (Background), Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 169
Kudos: 967





	1. Prologue: Liberation

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to [Squishbaebae](https://squishbaebae.tumblr.com/) who this story would literally not exist without.Thank you for the many hours of drunken brainstorming and your edit suggestions, you're the actual best.
> 
> This is just a short prologue for one helluva whopper length monstrosity and I apologize in advance for the ridiculous world building.If anyone has any questions or wants to talk shop you can always find me on [tumblr](https://himboskywalker.tumblr.com/).
> 
> I would like to note that this is a soulmate au,and as such, there will be a lot of pairings in this fic.I haven't tagged all of the minor and secondary pairings because I don't want to clog up the other ship tags when 99% of the focus of this fic is for obikin,but do be aware there are a lot of background character relationships,though any of their content will be T rated at most.

Anakin is born on a spaceship amongst the stars and he has been a slave since the first beat of his heart from within the womb.

The Hutts sold his mother in the open-air slave markets on Tatooine, and he as well he supposed, since he sat in her belly, almost to term, when the slavers took her to their ship. A heavily pregnant woman was a liability, but a child born into slavery, birthed on the ship he served, was worth more than credits. You can’t buy defeat known since the first breath.

The slavers sold them to pirates, but one new owner over the other bore no difference to him and his mother. They called them by their allotted numbers and maybe he would have forgotten the fundamental difference between himself and the droids he repaired, if his mother didn’t hold him in her arms at night, stroking his hair and whispering his name into his ear.

 _Anakin Skywalker,_ she called him, even though slaves didn’t have last names. But she told him it was only fitting, when he was born on the cold durasteel floor of a starship.

It is all he knows, the electrical innards of the ship and glimpses of foreign worlds from its docking ramp. He knows how to take apart and put back together the droids blindfolded, knows the mechanics and guts of the ship better than the adults who fly it.

He knows the way they feel too, sometimes, and he knows things will happen before they do. His mother tells him to never let their owners discover this, tells him what he can do and what she can sometimes do too, is special and secret.

So he keeps his head low and bent and ignores the viperous, sharp edged thoughts of their owners, who look at him and see a thing, no more human than the machines he fixes. Their masters think he is broken in, that he does not know what freedom is, or how normal people live their lives by their own say and without repercussions like their rations withheld or their backs beaten.

But he plucks memories from their minds like ripened fruit, just begging to be bitten into, and he sees the cruelty he and his mother endures for what it is, he knows what freedom is, and he wants it, more than anything in the world.

But every day is just like the other, time nothing but a continuous bleeding wound. The only things that break the monotony are the glimpses of other worlds he sees from their masters’ eyes, and the pulsing warmth of his mother’s love that cradles him at night like a physical thing, fierce and gentle all at once.

And then one day, when their ship is docked at a far flung and nameless Outer Rim spaceport, the monotony is broken by the sounds of blaster fire ricocheting through the halls. They cower behind crates of spice in the cargo bay, his mother crouched over him with her arms holding him against her chest. He feels the echoes of the blaster shots as pops of pressure in his skull, pockets of nameless energy that swell in his ears.

Beneath the deafening zings of blaster discharge, rises the crackling hums of energy weapons that shriek when they collide with the blaster fire. Anakin can _feel_ these foreign energy weapons, can feel the fields of heat they emit, thrumming in his veins as if he is a conduit for the currents of power surging through the air.

The blaster fire falls silent and the foreign pillars of energy still crackle in his bones before those too disappear, leaving the ghosts of their power still humming in his ears. Then, the only sound to fill the cargo bay is two pairs of boots clomping across the grating that stop in front of the crates they cower behind. Anakin peers up from beneath the long curtain of his mother’s hair and sees two men in belted tunics and brown robes, who radiate heat and light, as if stars were trapped beneath their skin.

He squints against the light and sees that one of the men isn’t a man at all, he is younger, perhaps eight or so years older than Anakin, but the other is older and terrifyingly tall, with long graying hair. He averts his eyes from the younger one, who shines so brightly it physically hurts and makes his head ache sharply behind his eyes.

_slaves—afraid—light—force_

He feels the older man’s intent and all fear drains away and he wriggles out from his mother’s hold.

“Anakin!” She cries. She can’t feel the men’s light and kindness, he knows, she doesn’t catch other’s thoughts nearly as often or as clearly as he does.

“Are you here to free us?” He demands.

The tall man squats to one knee and smiles, wide and brilliant. “We are, young one, what is your name?”

“Anakin Skywalker,” he says proudly, able to tell another being the last name his mother gave him for the first time in his life.

“A good name,” the man rumbles. “I am Qui-Gon Jinn, and this is my padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Why are you glowing?” He asks.

The younger man, Obi-Wan, kneels gently in front of him and he shields his eyes, peaking through his fingers at the beaming starlight that glimmers from his skin.

Obi-Wan frowns, “How old are you, Anakin?”

“Seven,” he says from behind his hands. “Can you glow less bright? You’re hurting my eyes.”

Qui-Gon laughs, booming and loud. “The force is strong with you, Anakin. I think there is a place for you far from here.”

His mother grabs him and pulls him against her, snarling, “You will not take my son from me.”

“Of course not,” says Qui-Gon. “You will both come with us to the Jedi temple.”

“Jedi,” his mothers says with wonder, though the word means nothing to him.

Obi-Wan smiles and the brilliant light he emits seems to glow even brighter and Anakin grimaces, turning his head away from the heat of him.

“You are children of the force, and we’ve come to take you home.”

* * *

* * *

Anakin found that the longer he stayed near the Jedi, the more bearable looking at their starlight became. He hovered near them on their ship, trying to keep quiet and out of their way from a lifetime of habit, but drawn to their light like a moth to flame.

But the Jedi were not like the owners he had known his entire life. Something about their light spoke of kindness, and that gentleness invited his nosy presence into the ship’s cockpit where they toggled switches and keyed commands into the flight controls.

Qui-Gon spoke rapidly to a flickering hologram projected from the dash’s commlink. “I’m afraid the rest of our mission must be delayed, Master Yoda. Obi-Wan and I felt two force sensitives held as slaves on a rogue pirate vessel while refueling on a Jovam station. We are in route back to the temple with the boy and his mother.”

“Safe and healthy, they are?”

“Yes master, they are both remarkably healthy, the boy especially—he is, extraordinarily bright in the force for being so young and without his soulmark manifested. He is especially sensitive as well, he is having difficulty looking at our force signatures, complained that Obi-Wan was blinding him.”

The hologram chuckled. “Full of light, he sounds. The boy and is mother, to the council you will bring, when arrive you will.”

“Of course, Master Yoda, may the force be with you.”

Obi-Wan turned from his pilot’s seat when the transmission cut and grinned at Anakin where he half hid behind the cockpit’s open doorway.

“You are welcome to join us,” he said, as warm and bright as the light he glowed with.

He crept between their seats and peered out the cockpit’s shield, watching the streams of blue starlight in hyperspace for the first time.

“What are Jedi?” He asked them.

“Jedi,” said Qui-Gon softly, “are like you. We can see and feel the energy around us that links all living things together. It is the light you see in Obi-Wan and myself; it is the light we see in you and your mother; we call it the force. We are taking you both to the Jedi temple on Coruscant, where you can live and train in the force with thousands and thousands of others like you.”

“And we won’t be slaves anymore?” He demanded.

“No, you are utterly free, to do anything within the order the force guides you to. Most Jedi live completely peaceful and normal lives, farming or in family units within the temple’s compounds. We live apart from others who do not see the light as you and I do, but in the future if you wish to leave, there are many other temples on other planets that you may go to.”

He furrowed his eyebrows and looked between Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s glimmering starlights. “I don’t want to be a farmer,” he grumbled.

Obi-Wan laughed. “Then you may be anything else you please, a pilot or mechanic, builder or healer or even a knight like Qui-Gon and me.”

That piqued his interest. “A knight?” That word he knew, from the many stories his mother whispered to him at night, tales of heroes who fought monsters and villains and carried laser swords. “You’re a knight?” He asked Obi-Wan with wonder, daring to squint directly into his pale blue eyes.

“Not yet,” he corrected. “I’m a padawan, a knight in training.”

“Like an apprentice? And then you’ll be a knight when you’re done training?”

Qui-Gon rumbled a laugh. “So full of curiosity, young one, that is good, it will serve you well. When Obi-Wan has learned all he can under me, the force may give him a personal trial and if he overcomes the quest, then the force will give him his soulmark. Only once his mark manifests and his power develops in full, does the force think him ready, and then he will be a Jedi Knight.”

“Master the boy doesn’t know what a soulmark is,” said Obi-Wan.

Anakin blinked between them and crossed his arms. “I do so, mom has told me all about knights, they come in twos because they all have soulmates and they always find them because they have matching soulmarks.”

“Your mother is a very smart woman,” murmured Qui-Gon. “But all Jedi have soulmates, though it is the will of the force to give our marks to us when it deems us ready. When you come to the temple you do not have to follow the path of knight to find your soulmate. The force will give you your personal trial no matter your destiny when it deems you worthy.”

“I’m going to be a knight,” he said with bone deep knowing.

Both Jedi laughed, not mockingly, but with gentle amusement at his ironclad, seven-year-old certainty.

“Not many Jedi follow the path of Knight. We are rare, even in the Order, as most who follow the light side of the force do not wish to be warriors, it is dangerous and our jobs as protectors of our people is a holy and noble task.”

Anakin’s small face deepened into an expression of young, but weighted seriousness. “Then I can protect my mom, so no one can ever hurt her again. I _will_ be a knight.”

They landed, days later, in a hangar full of starships and brimming full of people who shone with the same light as the Jedi knights they had traveled with. Anakin followed after the long sweep of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s robes with his mother’s hand held comfortingly on his shoulder.

It was just so b _ig,_ and full of so many people, both humanoids and foreign alien species alike. They twinkled and glimmered in the force, though none as blindingly bright as Obi-Wan. All of the brightness and sound made his head hurt and he tucked himself more closely against the warm comfort of his mother, who pulled him into her arms to carry him, even though he knew he was too big for her to carry his weight comfortably.

They followed the Jedi through high arched halls decorated with towering columns of marble, looming statues of figures dressed in the same types of tunics and robes that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan wore, and filled with bright sunlight that illuminated the painted walls covered with hundreds of murals. Many of the windows weren’t the transparisteel he knew but broken into small, brightly colored panels that formed pictures which cast the white stone halls into glimmering seas of color.

He liked the paintings and windows best that depicted twin figures holding hands, always with two ginormous, golden suns behind them. They reminded him of the starlight the Jedi they saw shone with, who all smiled and waved at him and his mother.

“These are the halls of heroes,” Qui-Gon said to his mother. “Jedi who have performed great deeds or who are foretold to do so in our prophecies.”

The Jedi they passed in the halls did not dress like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Most of their belted tunics were sleeveless or cut low against their chests from where they didn’t seem to wear undertunics beneath the wrapped and belted fabrics. He reasoned, after they walked through the colorful halls and into a transparisteel turbolift, that it must be to show off the tattoos they all had, some black, some colorful, many simple, a few ornate. They covered the Jedi’s arms, their shoulders or chests, even one or two had markings on their faces.

“Are those soulmarks?” He asked in the turbolift, still held in his mother’s arms.

“They are,” Qui-Gon answered. “One day you will have one too, when the force deems you ready to find your soulmate and reach your true power.”

The turbolift opened to a light filled chamber, circular and with windows open to the cityscape around the temple. In the center of the chamber sat a circle of figures, some physically in the room and some there by blue holoimage. A small green figure beckoned them closer and his mother finally lowered him to his feet and shoved him ahead of her with a push against his shoulders.

“Force sensitive, you both are, I see. Slaves you were, but Jedi, to become you wish?”

“I think I am past the age of learning the force, master,” said his mother, “But my son, Anakin, I wish to be a Jedi. I will work, do whatever job I must if your order will allow me to stay near him while he trains.”

The green figured waved his hand. “Never too old, to find the light you are. Turn away, a child of the force, the Jedi way it is not. Stay here, you may, the will of the force and your own path, find you shall. Hmmm—” he turned his attention to Anakin. “Bright in the force you are, when only half your power you have, and your soulmark, manifested yet it has not.”

“I’m going to be a Jedi Knight,” he said fiercely.

The circle of figures all laughed, and he felt their amusement in his mind, like he could with his masters on the ship.

A dark-skinned man with a bald shiny head looked at him with a gentle expression and humor curling his mouth. “The path of the Jedi Knight is a difficult and sometimes impossible road for most, young one. Even Jedi who train as padawans for years sometimes do not reach the point of receiving their soulmark. Some, rather many, stay Knight Apparents for many years before they receive their mark, some go their entire lives without ever becoming a full knight.”

“I don’t care,” he said, peering over his shoulder where the two knights who saved him and his mother stood. They looked to him, like the storybook legends she always told him, towering and noble and good, brimming with starlight. “I’m going to be a knight,” he insisted.

The dark-skinned man and green creature exchanged a look. “A crèche clan, assigned for now you shall. Learn the Jedi path, first you must. A home, you will have. Rest and train, the light heal you, it will.”

* * *

He and his mother were given an apartment ten times the size of their bunks on the ship and fed hot food that filled his stomach oddly after only a few bites. Over many days they were shown the temple’s almost incomprehensibly massive compounds and grounds.

The main fortress of the temple, filled with great marble halls, training rooms, classrooms, private housing complexes, dormitories, kitchens, archives, and libraries, and the Room of a Thousand Fountains, housed many thousands of the Jedi Order. Outside of the temple walls were other compounds where entire extensive families and clans also lived, housed amongst greenhouses and botanical gardens under hexagonal transparisteel structures that stretched for miles.

The crèhe clan the green creature spoke of that he was assigned to, turned out to be a group of other younglings near his own age, ranging from toddlers to children a year or so older than him. The same green creature from the chamber, he learned was called Master Yoda, the Grand Master of the entire Jedi Order, taught their group called Bear Clan.

He led them, toddling on small legs and with the aid of his cane, through the temple’s great halls, teaching them lore and tradition and the ways of the force. He was horribly behind many of the other younglings born at the temple, and fought with gritted desperation, to learn fundamentals like reading and writing, history, or as Master Yoda seemed to consider most important, socialization, which he struggled with the most.

He did not know how to interact with the other younglings, did not know how to play or joke or laugh. These were the first children besides himself he had ever seen and trying to talk with them left him twisted up and confused. They said he was too serious, wasn’t any fun, not when he still sometimes cowered instinctually away from the adults or stumbled on the respectful title of master that he associated with something else entirely.

After weeks of stumbling through these interactions with little improvement, Master Yoda always knew to find him in the halls of heroes, often crying or sniffling to himself, tucked beneath a stained-glass window or hidden behind a past knight’s statue.

“Your pain and suffering, they know not. The horrors of slavery, unknown to the Jedi they are, unknown to the Republic they are.”

“I thought it would be different,” he sobbed, “I thought being free would make me happy.”

“Hmm,” Master Yoda said thoughtfully. “Happiness, difficult to find it can be. Inside, you must look for it. True freedom, in the light of the force, can only be found.”

Anakin sniffled and threw his arms around him, searching for the same comfort and warmth his mother gave to him in times such as these, but who was busy training in one of the greenhouses during this particular moment of crisis. He startled, but after a moment wrapped his small furry hands around his shoulders and petted his head comfortingly.

“The will of the force, unclear it can be. Though our paths, light they are, still dark and clouded, they may seem.”

But most life inside of the temple brought an easy joy, even though change and the unknown filled him with constant unsurety and fear. Many things remained a struggle, including his learning of the force itself, and how to dim the signatures of the other Jedi around him. The force around him just glowed so bright, so full of sound and energy, and the more he learned of the light, the deeper his sense and constant notice of it became.

When they first arrived at the temple, during his visit to the medbay for standard testing and vaccines, a healer prodded at his mind and hummed at whatever they saw on their datapad.

“Hmm,” the bothan said, “you do seem extraordinarily force sensitive, though we can’t test your true midichlorian count until your soulmark appears. Don’t think I’ve seen a brain scan this list up since Obi-Wan Kenobi, though I’ll cross check your results with the other offworld temples, see how you’re comparing to other recently found sensitives.”

He perked up at the name. “Obi-Wan,” he asked excitedly, “I’m like Obi-Wan, does that mean I _will_ get to be a knight?”

The bothan healer smiled around their sharp teeth, which might have looked disconcerting if he couldn’t feel their gentleness or see their light in the force. “That I cannot say, it’s entirely if you pass your initiate tests, whether you move on to become a padawan learner.”

Other facets of Jedi life were frighteningly easy, practically inherent to his very being. He took to flight simulations and saber training like breathing, and his proficiency in those things at least, made the force sing to him and filled him with adrenaline lit pride.

After one such practice session in the crèche, when he pinned another youngling two years older than him with a thrilling somersault that he didn’t even know he could do, Master Yoda pulled him aside with a particularly pleased and mischievous smile.

“Very strong in the living force, you are. A padawan to spar with and learn from, you should.”

He lit up, bouncing on his heels. “Can I train with Obi-Wan?”

Master Yoda chuckled, “Offworld, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan have been, but when they return, ask him I will.”

Weeks later, when the two knights returned to the temple, Obi-Wan found him in the halls of heroes gazing at the Coruscant setting sun through his favorite stained-glass window with the twin figures and golden suns. He had found in his two months on Coruscant, during his many long hours of lingering in that part of the temple, the window cast the hall in syrupy golden light in the late afternoons.

He sensed Obi-Wan long before he stepped up beside him, somehow even taller than he remembered and his copper hair glinting like fire in the golden light of the window. Anakin thought, with odd embarrassment, that the padawan looked very much like the handsome heroes his mother had always told him about, who saved the Republic from evil creatures thousands of years before them.

“You like the Sons of Suns?” Obi-Wan asked with amusement.

Anakin frowned up at him, squinting, even after months to grow used to it, against the brilliance of his force light. “Sons of Suns?”

Obi-Wan radiated amusement and flipped his padawan braid over his shoulder. “It’s the oldest unfulfilled prophecy in the Jedi Order, comes from the days of the Old Republic. It foretells two sons of suns, soulmates under the rule of two born under twin suns, who only if they come together in a dyad of power, will the darkside be finally defeated and balance brought to the force.”

“The rule of two?” He parroted.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. “What is Master Yoda teaching you lot? The rule of two, you know, soulmates, only when twin soulmarks appear through the will of the force can the dyad reach their full shared power in the light.”

Anakin followed after Obi-Wan, glancing back over his shoulder to catch a last glimpse of the golden lit window before turning his attentions back to the padawan quickly marching down the hall. “I know what soulmates are,” he complained. “I just haven’t heard anyone call it that before. Why does a Jedi have to share their power, doesn’t that make us weaker?”

Obi-Wan stopped abruptly and turned on him, with a grave expression on his face. “You can’t say things like that, those are thoughts of the dark side. We share our power because we share two halves of one soul, it is the ultimate act of selflessness for a force sensitive. Only the Sith deal in absolutes,” he said darkly. “To forsake your soulmate is a want for power and can only lead to the dark side.”

Anakin ignored the severity of his tone and followed him closely once he began walking again. “Do you think you’ll get your soulmark soon?”

“I hope not,” he said, still grave. “I’m only seventeen and nowhere near ready to be a knight.”

“But,” he said, eyes incredibly wide, “being a knight is wizard.”

Obi-Wan laughed, toothy and bright. “I suppose it is, but for now I am content to wait and hope my path in the force gives me time before I must cross that road. Now, Master Yoda said you’re advanced in you saber training and want more lessons?”

“I have to be the best so I can pass my initiate trials.”

Obi-Wan ruffled the top of his head and he squawked under the attention indignantly.

“That sounds like pride more than determination,” he said with a teasing lilt.

“No,” Anakin insisted. “I _have_ to be a knight; I just know it.”

Obi-Wan peered down at him with a considering glint to his eyes as he rubbed at his dimpled chin. “I felt the same way when I was a youngling, how quickly you’ve come to that decision since being here is just surprising. You are bright in the force, though, I am sure you will succeed in becoming a padawan.”

Anakin beamed at him and didn’t even squint against his blinding starlight, utterly worshipful and overflowing with pride at the words of encouragement from the heroic knight he considered his savior.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The phenomenal and gorgeous art is by the wonderful [Squishbaebae](https://squishbaebae.tumblr.com/).
> 
> All my inspiration for the halls of heroes comes from visiting the [Sagrada Familia](https://sagradafamilia.org/en/photo-gallery) which is earth shatteringly gorgeous beyond words,those stained-glass windows are just something else.


	2. Son

**2 Years Later**

* * *

“And where do you think you’re going?”

Anakin froze halfway out the door, jogan fruit clenched between his teeth and one boot only partway on. He peered back into their apartment where his mother sat cross legged on a meditation mat, drinking her morning caf.

“Umm,” he said, “To practice with Obi-Wan before morning meditation with Master Yoda?”

She arched one eyebrow, pointed and amused. “And what makes you think poor padawan Kenobi wants to be woken at this force forsaken hour when he and Master Jinn only just returned planetside last night?”

He pouted, pulling on his boot all the way and leaned against the doorframe to chomp into the purple flesh of the jogan fruit leaking violet down his chin. “But mooom,” he whined, “I haven’t seen Obi-Wan in two weeks.”

“And I’m sure Obi-Wan is worn to the bone from their mission. Come sit with your mother and finish your breakfast, let him sleep a little longer.”

He groaned but shuffled back into the living room to flop on the floor beside her, grumbling and impatient. She tucked an errant curl escaping from his ponytail behind his ear with a fond smile only half hidden behind her mug of caf.

“Darling, I know you are very fond of him, but he is training to be a knight and is very busy with important matters. You mustn’t bother him incessantly.”

He sullenly chewed on his fruit and sulked into his lap, practically a black raincloud in the force. “I don’t _bother_ him,” he said indignantly. “Obi-Wan says he _likes_ to spar with me.”

She sighed but didn’t say anything else, drinking her caf as the force settled peaceful in the room. They sat long enough for them to both fall into mediation, or well, his mother settled into peaceful mediation and he managed to sit still for a few minutes before losing patience with the stillness, the force rushing in his ears to roar against the silence. The others didn’t understand, didn’t feel the force swelling like water to fill the cracks inside him if he sat too long, didn’t hear the thundering symphony of power thrumming in the air if there was nothing to stopper the silence, nothing to arrest his attentions or the focus of his mind.

But the signatures and auras of others did help, did dampen the torrent of music and energy, and the soothing lull of his mother crooned like a lullaby to his soul, gentle and steady as the moons and stars. But even the constant peace of his mother could only quell his nine-year-old frenetic energy for so long and she finally sighed, squinting open one eye in exasperation.

“Alright, give my apologies to Obi-Wan, I held you off as long as I could.”

He bounced to his feet and careened out of their apartment with a cry of triumph, halfway down the residents’ halls before she could finish the sentence. Jedi tilted out of his way as he barreled through the temple, thundering past the wings of Jedi residences to the padawan’s billets and knights’ barracks.

Master Plo Koon laughed as he stepped out of his way, calling a cheerful, “I take it Master Jinn and Obi-Wan have returned?”

He reached Obi-Wan’s private quarters but as he lifted his hand up to bang against the door, it swished open to reveal Obi-Wan, dressed in his padawan tunics but still blinking sleep from his eyes.

He smiled around a yawn, radiating golden light into the force. Anakin privately thought the way his sunlit aura hung around his head and caught the copper of his short hair in a fiery halo made him look like an angel, like the ancient oil paintings in the archives from the Old Republic, when the Jedi still believed in the old gods.

“I felt you projecting halfway through the temple,” he laughed, “happy to see me?”

Anakin lurched forward and wrapped his arms around his waist, squeezing his middle into a tight hug. He knew some of the other younglings made fun of him behind his back, said he was too old to hang off Obi-Wan like he did, that is was embarrassing. He caught snippets of their thoughts, when they were thrown around so loudly, pointedly even, that the other boys his age didn’t touch and follow around the knights like he did, like a lost duckling.

He ignored them mostly. They were born in the temple, didn’t grow up on the stories of heroes like he did just to survive the misery of everyday. They weren’t saved by them, didn’t owe everything to them like he did. But even so, the knights were towering figures of glory and justice and he thought, rather snidely, that the other younglings were just too snotty and prideful to fully appreciate how amazing the knights in the Order were.

Obi-Wan returned the hug, squeezing his shoulders and radiating fondness through the force. “Come on, I think we have enough time for some quick practice before the Crèche’s meditation.”

He followed after him happily, bouncing close on his heels as they trailed through the bright morning light glimmering through the halls. He liked the way the sunbeams caught dust motes in their path, it always made the air look like the stained-glass windows in the halls of heroes, made every marble gallery shine like the depictions of the Sons of Suns.

“What was Arreyel like?” He demanded. He and his mother hadn’t left Coruscant since being brought to the temple, and while he savored sunlight and fresh air and not being locked inside of a spaceship, he longed to see all of the faraway places he knew from his previous masters’ minds, all of the exciting and exotic destinations the knights adventured to. Following in Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s footsteps always took precedence as his main driver to becoming a knight, but the liberty to travel, to explore and always be free followed and took up large chunks of his mind.

Obi-Wan shrugged and flipped his braid over his shoulder. “Small, quiet, it will make for a good location for the academy, if the Senate decides to choose it.”

Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were assigned to the Inner Rim planet on behalf of peace outreach maneuvers on request of the Republic Senate, to scope out the compatibility of Arreyel to host a new aeronautical engineering and design academy, meant to teach the Republic’s youngest and brightest. The Jedi Order had very little to do with the Senate and Republic framework, almost completely removed from galactic politics and affairs, but recent education measures encouraged some collaboration, as the Order sometimes outsourced engineering and mechanical instruction to Republic universities with more resources for specialized training.

“Do you think I might study at the new academy?”

Obi-Wan glanced down at him and arched one eyebrow. “Do you really think they can teach you anything you don’t already know?”

He preened under the padawan’s offhand praise, though Obi-Wan wasn’t the best judge when his mechanical knowledge could be described as rudimentary at best, and any expertise Anakin revealed from his life as a slave, he always deemed remarkable and highly skilled. All the same, any praise from Obi-Wan burned brighter than the sun.

He shrugged in return, adopting false modesty that Obi-Wan saw right through. “I guess not, I’ll be busy training like you anyway.”

“Has the Council given you a date for your initiation trials yet?”

He nearly tripped over his own feet in excitement as he squeezed past Obi-Wan to face him, trotting backwards so that he could look up at him when he delivered the news which had eaten away at him the two weeks Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon were gone.

“In a standard month, when Master Windu returns from the Temple of Ledeve. You’ll be there won’t you, both you and Master Qui-Gon?”

Obi-Wan cuffed the back of his head and shoved him into the training room, where several other padawans already sparred with practice sabers and tousled on the mats.

“Of course I will, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

He beamed then and knew he projected un-Jedi like pride and self-confidence freely into the training hall, but Obi-Wan’s never-ending patience and kindness brought it out in him.

They grabbed practice sabers from the racks and Anakin engaged his hilt, thrilling at the quiet hum of energy that channeled up his arm and stirred up the force around him. He spun the yellow blade in a tight circuit and faced Obi-Wan, who illuminated his own lilac tinted saber.

“Have you been practicing that parry I taught you?” He asked, spinning his blade in an easy circle of light, warming up as he hopped lightly on his toes.

Anakin liked that he didn’t hold back, always stretched and warmed up before their spars like it was something he needed to prepare for, as if he actually posed any challenge. He didn’t of course, not at nine, but it made him feel competent at least, worthy of taking his initiate trials to become a padawan for real. Every one of their practice sessions ended the same, with him pummeled into the mat and Obi-Wan grinning over him, but it always left him buoyant and sparking with the living force, always quieted the operatic chorus of noise inside his head.

“I have, but when are you going to let me practice against you when you fight with Jar’Kai?”

Obi-Wan lunged forward and attacked his left side unexpectedly in a lightning quick stab. He yelped in surprise and pivoted out of the blade’s reach, parrying it to snap back as an afterthought.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, all exasperation, though he had a way of delivering chastisement with equal amusement, always softening his criticism. “You aren’t even a padawan yet, you’re not ready to fight against two sabers.”

“Maybe I am,” he sniped, attempting to dive under Obi-Wan’s reach and swing at his knees, trying to find an opening in his seemingly impenetrable, standard Soresu. It drove him crazy, that his offensive style of fighting always served flawlessly, that he couldn’t find a seam in his tightly protected armor to exploit. He was still young, very unpracticed and unable to meet Obi-Wan’s sheer talent and expertise in saber fighting; he was, after all, one of, if not the best saber fighter in the Order.

Obi-Wan knocked him to the floor effortlessly, taking him out with a single heavy swing of his arm and stared him down with the tip of his humming blade pressed close to his neck.

“Give,” he said.

Anakin lifted his chin higher, impertinent but also bearing his throat in the process, but it was no form of giving in, no form of defeat or surrender.

Obi-Wan pressed his saber, pushing it closer so that it’s heat bit at the tender skin under his throat. He swallowed, wide eyed and terribly young to be filled with such will, but nevertheless, he did not give in.

“ _Give,_ Anakin,” he said, a bit sterner then.

He jutted his chin higher, taking on an air of deliberate obstinance, and they both glared at the other, young and brimming in their untampered tempers.

But then padawan Secura burst into the training hall, radiating happiness and glee into the force. All of the sparring pairs tripped to stumbling pauses as she gasped, catching her breath. “Vos got his soulmark!” She announced, pulling at her lekku harness in excitement.

All of the padawans in the room crowded her, even Obi-Wan pulled into her orbit from the news. _What is it?_ They all exclaimed, demanding to know the location and identifiers of the mark. Was there a match in the temple already, did the appearance of his mark immediately announce his soulmate too? When was his knighting ceremony, now that the force deemed him ready and worthy?

She held up her hands, exasperated at the crowding. “All I know is he came back from his mission on Botajef with a yellow stripe across his face. He’s meeting with the Council now.”

They all began to talk over the other, repeating their questions and exclaiming in excitement, debating if the description of a yellow face stripe matched anyone they knew within the Temple complex.

He tugged on Obi-Wan’s tunic and he turned to Anakin with a smile, pulling him closer into the circle by the tug of his ponytail. “Does his soulmark sound familiar to you, little one?”

He ignored the demeaning nickname and curled closer into Obi-Wan’s side. “I don’t know anyone with a yellow face stripe,” he said.

“Neither do I,” he consoled. “But Vos isn’t much older than I am, there is a good chance his soulmate hasn’t received their mark yet, or they are from another temple.”

“I don’t know,” Padawan Secura said again, even more exasperated as the others continued to crowd her. “I saw him in the landing hangar, that’s all I know. See if I deliver news to you lot again,” she scoffed.

“Come along,” Obi-Wan finally directed him back to the mats, igniting his saber. “Let’s get in a few more rounds before your mediation, can’t have you getting sloppy before your trials, now can we?”

He lit his own blade, steely determination washing over him at the gentle teasing. He couldn’t be anything but the best, couldn’t fail, couldn’t let Master Qui-Gon or Obi-Wan down. He couldn’t disappoint them, he just couldn’t.

* * *

“Anakin,” his mother murmured, pulling his chin up to force him to meet her eyes.

He blinked away tears and rubbed the back of his hand across his nose. “He promised,” he sniffled.

She dropped to her knees in front of the Council chamber’s entrance and stopped him, pressing her fingers into his narrow shoulders. “Anakin, I have told you they were sent on a very important mission. You know Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan wouldn’t have missed it if they had any other choice.”

His eyes welled up with more tears and his bottom lip wobbled as he fought crying outright. The other younglings teased him for how easily he did, always laughed at the way his eyes went pink and spilled so easily. His mother told him they mocked his tenderness, that they didn’t understand his intense empathy. But he wondered if they were right, if he was just a weak baby who didn’t have the strength or fortitude to ever be a knight.

“He just promised,” he muffled his sniffling behind his fist, “Obi-Wan promised they’d be here. I can’t do it without him.”

Her expression went stern as she pulled up the hem of her sleeveless, blue tunic to wipe the tears and snot from his face. “Anakin Skywalker you do not need Obi-Wan to pass your initiate trials. Does he give you the force? Can you not fight with a lightsaber or use your perceptions and power when he is away?”

His face scrunched. “No—but he makes me better.”

“Of course he does,” she said simply. “He is your friend and you admire him. Our love for others always drives us to be better. I do it for you and you do it for me, my love. But that doesn’t mean you cannot pass these trials without him”

“What if they come back and I’ve failed?” He whispered.

“You won’t, my dear, but even if you did, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan will know the will of the force is guiding you down another path, where you are meant to be.”

She ushered him into the Council Chamber without another word and he quickly wiped the evidence of his tears away, embarrassed before the circle of waiting masters in their seats. His mother stepped back to the wall and he walked to the center of the chamber, feeling more unsure than he ever had in his life.

“Ready for your trials, are you?” Master Yoda asked with a pleased smile, his eyes half open and ears perked high.

He wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic but nodded. “Yes, master, I proclaim my intent to prove my worth to the force,” he recited slow and careful.

Master Yaddle hummed and smiled at Master Yoda and then him. He knew they were soulmates in the barest sense, because of their shared marks etched into their hands, a black scripted word in a language he did not know. But as much as he saw Master Yoda every day from his teachings in the Crèche, Master Yaddle he only ever saw passingly, though he knew her to be kind and of a similar temperament to the Grand Master.

“Begin then, we shall,” she said. “Your first trial, to know the code, you must.”

“Emotion, yet peace, young Skywalker, what does it mean?” Asked Master Windu from behind the steepled press of his hands.

He thought of love, for his mother, for his masters, for the knights he adored. He thought of the fire that love filled him with, and his peace because of it.

“That we cannot be controlled by our emotions, that we must know them and understand them to be happy.”

“Happy?” He questioned with a tilt of his dark eyebrow.

Anakin flicked his eyes to Master Yoda and then back, suddenly unsure. “Peace—or happiness, I think it is the same. Master Yoda says happiness can only come from inside you, and peace too.”

“Do Jedi have emotions?”

“Of course we do,” he said in a tone unable to hide how stupid the question sounded to him. “But we can’t be slaves to them, if we want to find freedom in the force.”

The smile Master Yoda gave him was something small and private, though exorbitantly pleased all the same.

“Ignorance yet knowledge, what does this mean?”

“That I must learn,” he said a bit sourly, though changed his tone at Master Windu’s exasperated expression. “That strength comes from knowledge, that we must know our history and those who sacrificed and did good before us. That above all as Jedi we are teachers and peacekeepers.”

“And what of passion, yet serenity?”

He hesitated then, stumbling over the part of the code that always stumped him, always gave him trouble and brewed deeper frustration inside him. Serenity, he found, was the hardest thing in the galaxy to find, harder than happiness even, or peace, but maybe those were the same things too, he didn’t quite know.

“I think it’s similar to emotions, master, that we may feel passion, we just can’t be controlled by it, that we can’t live what we believe by it. Passion is anger and hatred but love too, and I do feel these things, but I can’t be guided by them, or shouldn’t be.”

Master Windu gave him a knowing look at that, when he had personally pulled Anakin aside after caught fighting with the other younglings many times. He admitted his own fiery personality, his own temper and passionate inclinations, but he also told Anakin being led by those instincts only birthed his own difficulties, his own struggles. Even still, Anakin troubled over it all the same, he knew he was passionate, but passion wasn’t a crime, still, serenity came rare and with agonizing difficulty.

“Chaos, yet harmony, what of that?”

He wrinkled his nose and wiped his hands against his pants again. “That the galaxy and life is full of chaos and it’s unsure and nothing is for certain, but the force is harmony and life too, that there is both and we can find harmony in chaos.”

“Is the force harmony for you?”

He lowered his eyes, a little ashamed then. “No,” he admitted, “it’s loud and bright and confusing.”

“Young, you are,” interrupted Master Yoda, “and strong. The force complex, it is, and difficult to understand. Embarrassed, you should not be, why you are here, to learn is.”

“Death, yet the force, tell me of this, young one.”

He swallowed and looked over his shoulder to his mother then. She smiled, wide and proud, and motioned for him to turn back around.

“All living things are in the force, that it is in us, and we are in it. When I die, I will not be gone, just moved—or maybe—someplace else? We are always with each other, when there is the force.”

“And what of the people you love, when they die?”

His bottom lip wobbled, and he tugged it between his teeth. “Then they will still always be with me.” They were the only words he ever spoke before the Council that he didn’t believe. By the way Master Windu stared at him he knew it too, but he only looked to Master Yoda in silence.

He hummed and his little ears slumped a little before lifting again. “Progress, in need of, but accept your answers, we do.”

His heart thumped against his chest, adrenaline making his hands feel numb and his head foggy.

Master Windu stood and Anakin blinked against the darkness of the hood pulled suddenly over his head. Then he felt a lightsaber hilt pressed into his hands and Master Yoda’s voice drifted to him through the muffled barrier of the dark fabric he breathed against.

“The second trial, to test your fighting technique, we must.”

For a moment only the heaving gasps of his own breathing filled his ears, but then beyond the fabric of the hood a lightsaber blade ignited with a thrumming crackle. More than hear it, he felt its energy prick into existence, as he always did when the kyber crystals sang into the force, each one ringing with a different note, a separate tune. It was the beauty of lightsabers, that they each glimmered individual, unique and special in the energy they emitted.

In the darkness of the hood, the energy of his apposing saber sang bright inside his mind, as visible and apparent before his eyes as if he could see, more even. He thumbed the switch on his hilt and power gushed from his hand. Each practice saber carried different, cut through the air and moved singularly and with distinct handling. The one he held he knew to be orange, because he had fought Obi-Wan with it before. It recognized him and resonated with his own life signature, their separate energies crooning through the living force in harmony.

He felt Master Windu move before he did, the pillar of light in his hand surging with preemptive energy, preparing to attack. He countered the strike unthinkingly and they fell into a dance of clashing sabers.

He moved without thought, body reacting to the swells and tugs of the force, to the guidance of the blade in his hand. He felt overcharged and buzzing, like an engine flooded or a battery overexposed. But still the force sang, like lilting wind chimes, and its tinkling song and the harshness of his own breath filled his mind completely.

He felt only a minute passed and then Master Windu’s saber extinguished and he disengaged his own, pulling the hood off of his sweat drenched head. The entire circle of Council members grinned at him and Master Windu shook his head, eyeing him like he was something ridiculous or charming.

“It’s over already?” He asked, confused.

“Skywalker, I think it is safe to say you are more than competent in armed combat. I will be sure to relay how well you performed to padawan Obi-Wan; he will be pleased to know his teaching has born such talented fruit.”

He beamed at the mention of Obi-Wan, a thrill going through him at knowing, in this at least, he wouldn’t disappoint the golden lit knight to be.

“One final test, we have for you, young Skywalker,” said Master Shaak Ti, leaning forward in her seat. From the depths of her robes she produced a multifaceted holocron and held it out to him. He stepped forward and took it from her long armed reach.

“You must open the holocron, young one.”

It pulsed in his hands, warm and alive, beating like a naked heart. He stared at it and then blinked at the Council members. “What is it?”

“History,” said Master Yoda. “Its contents, matter not, simply open it, you must.”

He squinted at the blue hexagonal thing and turned it about, examining each separate side, searching for a catch or opening seam. Finding none he brought it up to his face and stared deeper into its blue glow. It sang in the force too, like a lightsaber, like another force user. It did not brim with the same living energy, it wasn’t sentient, but it encased some form of sentience, or memories rather. They seemed to whisper from its depths.

_War—Love—Darkness_

He didn’t have words to describe what opening himself to another’s mind felt like, perhaps a revelation, or like the warmth of sunlight inside his head. But he opened himself to the holocron, welcoming its whispers that grew louder the deeper he dug.

_Love—Loyalty—Heartbreak_

The holocron’s many facets twisted like the mechanisms of a lock, each slotting and catching against one another. It burned hot as a coal in his hands and then he heard its voice, a woman’s voice, say clear and achingly, _Revan._

He looked up to the Council, holding the holocron away from himself, like one might hold a small, wriggling animal.

“Congratulations padawan Skywalker, you have passed your initiate trials to become a Jedi Knight.”

* * *

“Anakin, my dear, you sitting by the window will not bring them back to the temple any faster.”

Anakin turned away from watching ships dock past the silhouette of the temple’s greenhouses.

“They were supposed to be back yesterday,” he said anxiously. “Master Yoda was acting strange this morning, mom. Something’s wrong.”

She looked up from her datapad and sighed. “You’re doing it again. You’re being paranoid, dear.”

“I’m not, I’ve got a bad feeling.” He turned back to the window, his stomach churning as his worry darkened inside him.

An hour passed, maybe more, and he gasped against the transparisteel, “that’s their ship, that’s their ship!” He ripped away from the window, but the dark feeling inside of him did not lessen at the sight.

“Anakin wait,” his mother called after him, but he ignored her as he flitted out the door. The halls bled past him as he ran, and his pulse echoed in his ears as he charged for the landing docks.

Their ship sat center in the hangar, exhaust and steam billowing around it as the decking ramp descended to the duracrete with a whir. An astrotech jolted out of his way, clutching a datapad to his chest as he thundered up the ramp, clanging like a crazed bantha. Everything in him eased at the sight of Obi-Wan illuminated in the ship’s docking door. All of his fears and the dark feeling from before seemed silly then.

“Obi-Wan!” He exclaimed, “I passed my trials! I’m a padawan now, Obi-Wan!”

Obi-Wan took a step onto the ramp, into the bright natural light of the hangar, and Anakin rolled back on his feet, so stunned he might as well have run straight into the side of the ship.

High on the side of Obi-Wan’s neck, just under his ear and the curve of his sharp jawbone, gleamed a luminous golden sun.

Obi-Wan sank down to one knee, his brown cloak billowing on the durasteel around their feet. Anakin realized, when Obi-Wan folded down to his height, that another golden sun shimmered on his collarbone, peaking out from the loosened neck of his tunics. He gaped, taking in the sight of the gleaming gold on his skin, and then finally looked Obi-Wan in the eyes.

He didn’t look happy, but infinitely sad, full of untold weariness and something darker.

“You got your soulmark,” he finally stuttered.

One corner of Obi-Wan’s mouth tilted into a sorrowful smile. “I did, and you are a padawan now. I’m terribly sorry I missed your trials, Anakin. I promised you I would be there, and I failed you.”

Anakin couldn’t keep his eyes off the glimmering binary suns etched into his skin for long. He stared, taking in how the gold seemed to shine with its own inner light, truly radiant. They didn’t look like any soulmark he’d ever seen in the temple, they looked like stained-glass caught in the setting sun. The thought took him like a hit to the back of the head.

“Obi-Wan,” he said carefully. “Are you a son of suns?”

His face slanted dark and even more tired then, some unseen shadow falling over his eyes. “Master Yoda seems to think so, but I must see the Council to be sure—I—”

A new realization dawned on him and that cold, dark feeling from before crept back up his spine, making his face and hands feel icy and pinpricked. “Where’s Master Qui-Gon?” He asked.

Obi-Wan’s expression collapsed and he pulled Anakin into his arms. Held tight and close against his chest, with his face tucked against Obi-Wan’s neck, the golden sun under his jaw pressed to Anakin’s cheek. It felt warm as afternoon heated metal.

“He’s passed into the force,” Obi-Wan choked against the top of his head. “I couldn’t save him. I failed.”

Anakin drew back then, still held in a hug, but far enough away that he could see the tears trailing openly down Obi-Wan’s cheeks. He reached up with his small hand and wiped some of those tears away. “But the force gave you your soulmark. That means you passed your trial.”

“I killed a Sith Lord, that is what gave me this mark. But I still failed my master.”

Anakin’s eyes went wide as he wiped more tears from Obi-Wan’s cheeks. “A Sith,” he whispered, voice filled with terror and awe. “I’m sorry.”

Obi-Wan closed his eyes, grief etched into every line of his young face and he let Anakin wipe his tears away.

“I’m sorry about Master Qui-Gon,” Anakin said softly, fighting back his own tears. He had loved the Jedi Knight too, though not as Obi-Wan did. He loved the towering man as hero and savior, Obi-Wan loved him as mentor, with the kind of ardency and loyalty that all padawans loved their masters with.

Obi-Wan opened his eyes and smiled gently. “Thank you.”

They stayed like that for a few more minutes, hugging each other and lending comfort. Anakin felt his pain and grief, echoing into the force as if they were his own. He felt the way Obi-Wan pulsed with it, like a heartbeat throbbing in an open wound. But there was no way to put his hand against his face and heal his heartache, like he watched the healers seal traumas of the flesh. He wished he could leach his pain, but even the force couldn’t take away human mourning.

“Keep me company to the Council Chamber?”

“Yeah of course,” Anakin said.

He trailed after him through the halls. They walked silent and he kept himself tucked close to Obi-Wan’s side, trying to lend comfort as he knew how. Being nine didn’t offer him many answers for his friend and mentor through words, he had nothing to say which could make either of them feel better. But he pressed close, made sure Obi-Wan felt his weight brushing against his leg and hip every few feet, just to reassure him he was still there.

But whispers followed them through the halls, and every Jedi they passed halted and gaped. Their shock and awe, their excitement and disbelief and staggered respect all rang through the force like a clanging gong. Everyone’s thoughts were just so strong and _loud._ Even the Knights they passed, the most respected and venerated members of the entire Order, who all bore their own soulmarks and carried themselves with such usual self-assurance, stopped to stare at Obi-Wan with naked wonder.

Their murmured words trailed after them, echoing against the gothic archways and marbled pillars.

_Son of Suns_

_Chosen One_

_Prophecy_

_Save us_

_End the Darkness_

_Balance to the Force_

_Powerful_

_Never Before_

_Foretold_

_Other Half_

Other half, he thought with sudden dread. The prophecy called for the Rule of Two after all, soulmates, a dyad. Obi-Wan now filled half of the Order’s greatest and most revered prophecy of the ages, but the second son didn’t have their mark yet. They would know, everyone would know if they did. Even now, the temple rumbled with a cacophony of building energy, the buildup of thousands of force sensitive beings’ excitement and joy and awe. He would sense it in the force, he felt sure.

Obi-Wan was a chosen one. The thought filled him with horror, not out of jealousy or any unkindness, but because he knew, Obi-Wan no longer had time for him, no longer had space for his trivial bothering and calls for attention in his staggeringly important and force ordained life. Obi-Wan’s destiny and greatness gleamed from the murals painted on the marble walls, from the golden panels of transparisteel in the stained-glass windows, from the statues in the archives even, from the ancient scrolls of history he studied in his classes. Obi-Wan’s deeds would go in the halls of heroes, since the ancients said he brought the end to the dark side. The greatest Jedi Knight to ever exist walked by his side.

Or not the greatest, but one of two of the greatest. And there sat the problem. Because deep in his heart of hearts, kept so embarrassedly secret even his mother didn’t know, he had thought he might be Obi-Wan’s soulmate. Or he wished it anyway, desperately, or as desperately as a nine-year-old can wish for such things.

But this ruined everything, he couldn’t be Obi-Wan’s soulmate because he couldn’t be a Son of Sun. The prophecy called for two sons born under binary suns. He knew the story, the lowliness and pain of his birth, that his mother pushed him into the world on a ship amongst the stars.

But even more, he knew their friendship probably over, their many hours spent training and saber fighting gone. Who even knew if Obi-Wan would stay at the Coruscant Temple, surely the Council now had many great quests for him, spread far and wide amongst all the places he longed to see throughout the galaxy?

Master Yoda said fear only sowed darkness, but as he walked through the great halls, pressed close to Obi-Wan’s side, he felt full of fear that he would lose his hero. And not the prophetic one, not the one the Jedi in the halls saw now, with the blazing binary suns glimmering on his skin. He wanted to shout at them, that since the day they met, Obi-Wan had shown like a star to him. He wanted to scream that he always saw the brilliance of him in the force, that he knew the strength of his light and didn’t need to see a stupid soulmark to recognize it. But he did no such thing, and only walked meek and quiet by Obi-Wan’s side, as they both overflowed with fear and dread for what the future held.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For your nerdy pleasure,if you didn't catch it,the Jedi's memories inside of the holocron was [Bastila Shan](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bastila_Shan) because I'm obnoxious and I live for literary parallels. 
> 
> If anyone is curious here is further info on [initiate trials](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Initiate_Trials),  
> [Temple life](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedi_Temple_dormitory), and the [sentience of Kyber crystals](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kyber_crystal). There's nothing to say Stewjon had binary suns,but there's also nothing to say it didn't,so hah!
> 
> I do realize these first two chapters have pretty much been info dumping for an entire au with a lot of context and canon divergent background,so thank you guys so so much for bearing with me and I really appreciate your feedback.If you guys have any questions or want to talk you know where to find me!


	3. Bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize this took the rise and fall of the Republic for me to post and thank you guys for your patience and feedback and love!
> 
> [Flyboy-and-fight-me drew a GORGEOUS fanart of the stained-glass Sons of Suns window you can find on tumblr that has me beside myself.](https://himboskywalker.tumblr.com/post/618301183694667776/got-my-fist-in-my-mouth-to-muffle-my-ungodly)
> 
> For any of you who read my other fics you know one of the things I like to do is create wardrobes and post outfit inspirations with the chapters but as this fic has very little to do with clothes I'm going with something a little different.[I created a playlist for the fic that I listen to while writing you can find here.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/08puZLAUhZtNb67n1ghKC4?si=kiFXRAMSTYeYCqlawJA2tA)
> 
> The song for this chapter is [Sun](https://open.spotify.com/track/6sn2HwNL4EmeYQQNumStgb?si=IDhjZP6AQ3O63y6fzXkugQ) by Thomas Bergersen.

Anakin sat on the marble floor, knees tucked under his chin, and stared up through the lazily floating dust motes. The afternoon light cast through the kaleidoscopic stained-glass Sons of Suns, washing the surrounding hall in syrupy golden tones. He looked at the two transparisteel figures clasping hands and glared, angry that even his joy and solace in the hall of heroes was now ruined.

The week since Obi-Wan’s return with the binary suns tattooed on his skin left him even more despondent than when he first arrived. The temple’s excitement and awe only grew as the days passed, the Jedi’s revel and worship fed from the Council’s confirmation that his soulmark named him a Son of Suns.

It was irrefutable and already the knight had no time for him, no place for Anakin in his life. He had seen Obi-Wan once since his return, in the passing exchange of a hug when he caught him leaving his room three mornings previous. The golden lit knight, though exhausted and strange looking without his padawan braid, shone brilliant as he squeezed Anakin’s shoulder and told him he couldn’t spar with him that morning, he had to meet with the Council. He supposed, fighting tears at the thought, that Obi-Wan would never want to spar with him ever again.

He figured it served him right, that he had ignored making friends with the other younglings his age for two years, too preoccupied with Obi-Wan and the other padawans and knights to ever bother. He had far too high a sense of self-importance, to ever think an older Knight like Obi-Wan viewed him as anything like a friend, anything more than an obligation given to him by the Order. Now Obi-Wan shone like a god of old, in his full power and gilded like the library’s muralled ceiling, with no time for a pesky youngling too awkward to make friends and half of the time still caught in the mental cage of his former slavery.

His circumstances might have humbled him but being reduced back to his beginnings only made him lonely and angry. He knew what it felt like to have nothing, and he knew what it felt like to have everything. The darkest nights on that ship with flayed open skin on his back from his master’s whip, aching to the sliced bone and oozing plasma while his stomach rolled cold, hollow, and hungry; sat like another person’s memories next to the joys of being a Jedi, of connection and comradery and the adrenaline that made his pulse surge when he lifted his practice saber against Obi-Wan on a training mat.

Remembered days of stripping wires till his fingers bled and his mother scrubbing durasteel until she could do little more than crawl, felt like another life next to warm days wandering the temple’s greenhouses to pluck fat, ripened Jungan Fruits from their stems and afternoons leaving smudged fingerprints against the lowest panes of the hall of heroes’ windows. He was a fool to think that the deep hurts and pains the force chose for his destiny might fade away to give ground for a path paved by love and glory and joy.

“Mmmm—find you here, thought I might.”

Anakin tore his eyes away from the sunlit window to Master Yoda leaning on his staff next to the towering statue of Stellan Gios, hero of the High Republic. The looming height of the hall’s statues, which made even the tallest Jedi look shrunken next to their grandeur, reduced the sight of Master Yoda to that of a mousedroid in the colossal hall. He normally took great peace in how the temple’s grandeur made him feel so small and minute, but now the marbled arches and honey cast walls sang of Obi-Wan’s grandeur, and his smallness felt lonely rather then lending its normal sense of humbling comfort.

“Master Yoda,” he acknowledged sullenly, “is there something you need from me?”

The Grandmaster of the Jedi Order made an amused noise at that, a small little trilling laugh that he kept in the back of his throat as his ears lifted in amusement. “Say that you can, time for you to take a master to train with, it is. Come with me, you shall.”

His stomach dropped even as he stood. The past two years were fought for this moment, but without Master Qui-Gon and without Obi-Wan, his aching drive to become a knight felt hollowed out and echoingly empty. He nevertheless followed behind Master Yoda’s small lumbering form through the halls, as the Grand Master rumbled his curious lilting hellos to the other Jedi who swept past them in the marbled stretches of the temple, all lit by their shining light in the force, even after all these years. 

“Troubled you seem, padawan,” he said.

“I—I’m worried about Obi-Wan.”

“Mmmm—” he nodded, “a difficult path he must walk, yes very difficult.”

“Is he going to leave the temple?” He hated how small his voice sounded then.

“The force’s path, for young Kenobi, know not I do. But much time to pass, before such a decision, I think.”

But how much time did that mean? Master Yoda’s life spanned much longer than his own human years, but did he measure such a stretch of time by his own concept of a lifespan or Anakin’s? How much time did he really have?

Master Yoda said nothing else on their slow amble to the Council Chamber as he leaned on his cane and hummed to himself, either unaware or ignoring Anakin’s inner turmoil as they walked in silence. They stepped through the tall doors and the masters present in the room, who stood milling around and talking, looked to them and took their seats. A hand settled on his shoulder and he startled, glancing up in surprise to Obi-Wan dimpling a smile down at him.

“Are you a master now?” He asked, confused.

Obi-Wan squeezed his shoulder and then his hand fell away. “Hardly,” he said with that same smile, “I’m here for you.”

Master Windu cleared his throat at that. “You have passed your initiate trials, Skywalker, and it is time for you to be assigned with a master to train as a knight. Obi-Wan has asked to be your master.”

He gaped and flicked an unsure glance between the circle of masters and then to Obi-Wan at his side, back and forth, though everyone in the room shared similar expressions of amusement at the open confoundment on his face. Master Yoda exchanged a squinty eyed smiled with Master Yodel and they both raised their ears at him, taking simple joy in his open, bowled over shock.

“You—want to be my master?” He asked Obi-Wan unsurely, looking at the gilded twin suns on his skin and the halo of golden light so bright it glimmered almost white, that always hung around his head. Perhaps if he weren’t so young, or still so unversed to the nuances of force signatures and the felt power of other sensitives, the strength of Obi-Wan’s light to him might have been its own testament of his prophetic status, of the fate dealt to him by the force. But he was nine and Obi-Wan had shown like a star to him since the moment they met, brighter than the binary suns etched into his skin or a Coruscant sunrise, or the memories he pulled like strung candy from the minds of others, of the multitude of other suns and stars in the galaxy. He shown brighter than all of them, though the other Jedi only saw his force light as a sun and not that of a star gone supernova like he did.

Obi-Wan asked him soft and quiet, only loud enough for him to hear in the high roofed and echoing chamber, “do you think differently of me now, because of it?”

His stomach flipped, at the expression on Obi-Wan’s face and the thought that his opinion mattered enough to the sunlit knight to bother him. “No,” he insisted, “I just thought you’d be leaving. I thought you didn’t want to be my friend anymore.”

Obi-Wan frowned, though Master Windu cleared his throat again before he could respond. “These are very irregular circumstances; I want you both to know. The Order has never allowed such a young and newly made Knight to train a padawan before. But the Council has decided, given your two’s previous training and bond of friendship, and that the force believes you worthy for such a responsibility as to bear half a prophecy, Kenobi, that we will allow your request to train Anakin.”

Anakin blinked, hope and excitement bubbling up, despite his sentiment only minutes before, that he couldn’t trust a happy fate to be given to him by the force. He blinked up at Obi-Wan, fighting a teary grin and Obi-Wan flicked him a gentle smile of his own, though he turned back to Master Windu.

“Thank you, master, for allowing me this. It was Master Qui-Gon’s wish to train Anakin, and his dying wish that I would do it in his stead. I will do my best to follow the will of the force and guide Anakin to his own knighthood and force blessing of a soulmark, as my master did for me.”

“These are unsure times with the return of the Sith,” said Master Ti, “though you are young and untested as a knight, we hope that your mutual difficult experiences will lend the other comfort and understanding.”

“The living force, strong you both are. Learn from your own strengths, he will,” said Master Yoda.

“Thank you, master,” Obi-Wan placed his hand back on Anakin’s shoulder, “may the force be with you all.”

He led Anakin out of the Council Chamber by that same firm hold on his shoulder and wheeled him through the halls and led him to the knights’ barracks and into his new room, moved from his previous billet where the other padawan’s kept their private rooms. He shoved him straight towards the fresher and pulled out a razor and turned it on with an impish grin.

“Ready for your padawan haircut?”

He groaned but slouched obediently against the counter, bending his head forward as Obi-Wan untied his ponytail and parted a chunk of curls on the side of his head to keep and braid. He ran the humming blade up the back of his scalp and chunks of hair fell into the fresher sink as only the jarring noise of the razor’s blade cutting through hair filled the room. He breathed deep and steady, hyperaware of the rise and fall of his own chest and the feel of the razor gliding along the curve of his skull. Obi-Wan finally clicked the razor off and ruffled his hand over his freshly shorn head, dusting stray hair off of him.

Anakin met his eyes in the mirror and they blinked silently at one another before Obi-Wan ducked his head, baring the shimmering gold on his neck for a moment as he began to braid the long chunk of hair on the side of his head.

“Why did you think I didn’t want to be your friend anymore?”

Anakin’s shoulders rose defensively as he closely examined the sink full of hair in front of him, while Obi-Wan gently tugged against his head as he tightly plated the padawan braid.

“I thought the Council would have lots of important missions for you.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth quirked up in a little grin in the mirror. “And why would that keep up apart, little one?”

He scowled at the nickname but lowered his eyes back to the sink and muttered, “didn’t think you’d have time for me, I’m just a kid.”

Obi-Wan tugged his braid as he wound the end in a band. “And I’m only a novice knight. You are my friend, Anakin, and a soulmark wouldn’t change that, no matter if it is on the temple walls or not. Do you really think me so vain?”

Anakin blinked rapidly, willing away the tears welling up under his lids and making his face feel hot. “No,” he said small and quiet, “but you’re a son of suns.”

Obi-Wan put a warm hand on his shoulder and turned him around so that his back faced the mirror. “Anakin,” he said, voice gentle and soothing, “now padawan of mine. You cannot think it changes me, I am who I am and have always been, a mark on my neck does not change who we are to one another. Does me choosing you to train not convince you of that?”

A stray tear did escape then and betrayed his weakness, trailing down his cheek slow and condemning. Obi-Wan sighed and went down to his knees to thumb it away and then pull him against his chest for a tight hug. He clung to his neck and buried his face against the second sun peaking out from his tunic.

“Yes,” he sniffled, “I’m sorry, master.”

Obi-Wan went perfectly still at that and then squeezed him so tightly it pushed the air from his lungs before drawing back to look pensively into his eyes. “Anakin,” he said carefully, “I know it is the Jedi way that you call me that. But I know—I do not expect you to call me master.”

Some odd feeling squirmed in Anakin’s chest then, unidentifiable and sharp. “But you _are_ my master.”

He frowned with his hand still on Anakin’s shoulder, head tilted as he squinted into his eyes looking for an answer he did not know to give. “I am, but I would never ask you to call me that if it pains you.”

That tight feeling in his chest grew, though maybe it did have a name after all, possessiveness. A slave did not own anything-not even themself and the Jedi swore away the attachments of the world, outside creeds, political allegiances and galactic ties and physical things. Jedi did not exert ownership, but their attachments of the living world were the ties that bind—family, friends, fellow Jedi—but their other half, their soulmate most of all. Anakin had never owned anything and perhaps it ate at him a little, dogged at the back of his mind—a want to own something for himself.

He wanted Obi-Wan as his, in whatever capacity or form he could get away with—his friend, his brother, and now his master and maybe one day, he hoped secretly, his soulmate. But for now, claiming the son of suns as his master, as _his,_ made that dark feeling in his chest claw at his insides till he felt raw with it.

“You are _my_ master,” he finally said, small but firm, “and I will call you master.”

Obi-Wan’s smile looked fragile as glass and tremulous for a weighted moment before he pulled Anakin back into one last tight hug. He pressed their foreheads together, eyes closed, and took a deep breath. “I will try my hardest not to disappoint you, little one, and honor the memory of what Master Qui-Gon could have given you.”

As they stood there in the fresher, foreheads pressed together and Obi-Wan resting on his knees, the force shifted between them like the changing of the wind. Obi-Wan always felt blinding and warm to him, as golden as the soulmark he bore, but that sun-warmed heat opened to him, unfurling like a flower seeking light. His own mind reached out to it, to him, the blooming bud of his own mind seeking the sunlight of his master’s aura.

It felt like a knot of gold thread tying between their minds and he knew, recognized enough from the ways the padawans talked, to understand this as the forging of a training bond between them.

He patted Obi-Wan’s cheek, a little unsure as they pulled apart. “You saved me and mom, master.” You could not disappoint me, he wanted to say, you could never fail me. It is me who fears disappointing you, of failing my friend, my savior, my hero. But he was nine and he kept those words to himself, tucked away and private, where all his young and tender hopes and wants lived inside him.

Obi-Wan smiled. “Speaking of your mother, you should go show her your braid, I think she will be very excited for you.”

* * *

His mother kissed the top of his newly trimmed head and wiped damp soil from her hands on her knees before tugging him against her for a tight hug. “I am so very proud of you my darling,” she said. “But I am so very happy for you, and to think you were so afraid of losing Obi-Wan you silly thing.”

He frowned at her teasing, leaning against her waist and pressing his nose against her tunic to take in her warm smell mixed with the scents of the wet soil and plants in the greenhouse around them. “I wasn’t afraid,” he muttered.

“It’s perfectly alright to be afraid, darling. It means even when you’re a big terrifying knight slaying dragons and going on adventures and quests to save the galaxy, you are still human just like me. Even Knights are afraid, my love, they simply learn not to give into it.”

He glared at his boots and scuffed his toes through the soil, that same ill feeling from before curling high and tight in his chest.

“Master Yoda says fear leads to darkness,” he said unhappily.

She sat on a long box overflowing with pink budding blooms, careful not to squash any of the delicate buds. “Emotions do not lead to darkness, but to be controlled by them does. We are only human you and I, even with the force. Our fear does not lead us to darkness, my love. If that were so I would have fallen to the dark side the day you were born. I lived every day on that ship in fear, terrified they would take you from me or hurt you, so scared they would kill you or something even worse than that.”

“But—” he frowned deep and confused, “isn’t feeling afraid giving into it, mama?”

She patted the box beside her and he sat, swinging his boots against the wooden trough and dragging his leather toes through the soil.

“Of course not, otherwise we would all be of the dark side. We all feel fear, that is normal and expected and nothing to be ashamed of, but to let your actions be guided by your fear, to do bad things or things you know are wrong because you are afraid—that is what leads to darkness. To let yourself be swallowed up inside, unhappy and unbalanced and miserable, it makes us unstable and that is was leads to darkness. You cannot suppress it or will it away, Anakin.”

He sighed heavily and continued to kick his feet. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how to feel it but not…act wrong because of it?”

She pulled him into her side and petted his newly shorn head, dragging her fingers through his fuzzy tufts of hair. “I understand it is hard for you, and maybe I am the only one who will ever really understand why. The Jedi are good, but we are the only ones who know what being slaves are like. You are still so very young, and that life was not so long ago for us. But what are you so afraid of now, my love?”

He shrunk against her and kept his eyes on his boots, unable or unwilling to look up and meet his mother’s soft eyes, afraid she might see the wickedness he knew stemmed from that dark feeling of possession in his chest. “I dunno,” he said sullenly, “that it will all go away, and we’ll have to go back.”

“ _Honey,_ ” she said in that way adults sometimes did, as if he were breaking her heart in two. “We won’t ever have to go back there, we are free, you will never be a slave ever again.”

Tears welled up in his eyes and he wiped at them angrily with the back of his sleeve. “I don’t want to lose you—I—I don’t want to lose Obi-Wan.”

“You will one day, Anakin,” she said matter-of-factly, “it is the way of the universe, the way of the force. We cannot cheat death and we cannot cheat loss. All things must pass, even stars die, Anakin Skywalker.”

He blinked up at her and whimpered on a sob, trying to stifle the outright crying bubbling up out of his mouth.

“Oh Anakin,” she said, pulling him tight against her and kissing the top of his head, “my poor, terrified little boy. May the force offer you peace in this.”

He sniffed and wiped his nose, taking a deep breath to center himself like Master Yoda had taught them during their meditations. “When do you think you will get your soulmark, mama?”

“I do not think I have one, my dear.”

He pushed away from her with a deep frown. “Of course you do, all Jedi have soulmarks.”

“Anakin—there is something you should know about how you—came to be?”

“Is this about my dad?” The word felt foreign in his mouth, having never said it aloud before.

Her mouth twisted oddly, and she got a funny look in her eyes. “Well, sort of—Anakin—you don’t have a father, my love.”

“I know that,” he said grumpily.

She laughed. “No, you have no father at all. I never—well—you’re special, you weren’t made like other children are.”

“You mean you didn’t have sex?” He said flatly.

She made a high shocked noise and covered her eyes with her hands for a moment and muttered from behind her fingers. “And where did you hear about that?”

“The padawans were talking about it, I heard them in the training room.”

“I’m sure you did,” she said darkly. “But you are right, you weren’t made like others—I don’t know how you came to be but by the will of the force. You just formed in my belly.” She planted a loud kiss against his forehead, and he grinned, squinty and pleased against it. “And then you came into this world screaming louder than a rancor and have been the greatest joy and blessing in my life the force could ever have given me.”

He snuggled against her. “I love you, mama.”

She kissed the top of his head again. “And I love you, my darling, more than you could ever know.”

“I still think you have a soulmate,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that the force made me.”

“Only time will tell I suppose, just as it will for you.”

* * *

“I have a question, master.”

Obi-Wan pulled himself up from the training matt to rest on his elbows, sweat dampening the hair only just beginning to grow out at his temples. “If you ask to practice against me with Jarkai again I’m going to beat you into that matt.”

Anakin grinned and folded his legs to tuck his feet beneath his knees, his own sweat cooling on his back and under his arms. “You’ll say yes one day.”

Obi-Wan gave him a look and sat from his sprawl to cross his legs as if preparing for meditation. “What was your question then?”

“Last week when the Council assigned me to you, Master Ti said something…”

“About the return of the Sith,” Obi-Wan said grimly.

“Yeah,” Anakin leaned forward to rest his weight against his knees, “what does that mean? What did she mean the return of the Sith?”

“Surely you have been taught about the Sith Empire in your history classes?”

He leaned deeper between his knees, stretching his hamstrings and hugging his ankles where his feet pressed together. “Yeah but that was the Old Republic, that was forever ago when we destroyed the Sith, how could they be coming back after thousands of years?”

“Obviously,” Obi-Wan said darkly, “we didn’t eradicate them completely. Where there is one there are many more to follow. My killing of a Sith only marks the beginning of a new Sith Empire. He would not have been the only one, but luckily the only one I had to face.”

“What—” he began cautiously, remembering years ago when Obi-Wan so quickly hushed his questions of soulmates and force power, “makes a Sith different from other darksiders? Master Yoda only says what they do is unspeakably evil, I don’t understand how they can be worse than a darksider who already give themselves to the dark side of the force?”

Obi-Wan took a deep breath, face troubled and through his shields and their newly forged training bond, as delicate as the tender pink buds his mother tended, Anakin felt his deep unease slipping through the force.

“They kill their soulmate.”

“What?” He said high and startled. “How—what do you _mean?”_

“You wanted to know. That’s the difference between a darksider and a Sith. Those who succumb to the dark side seek control and power, but the Sith seek ultimate power by eliminating the other half of the dyad and obtaining both halves of their soul so that they can become all powerful and controlling in the force. A Sith does not share power, not even with the other half of themselves, it is—wholly and incomprehensibly evil. They are torn apart from it, made utterly unstable and shattered, most fall into complete insanity from it.”

“But how—”

“I do not know the particulars, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, all exasperation as he reached out to ruffle the top of his head. “To give yourself to the darkside is itself a betrayal of what we are, but the foundation of a Sith is built on selfishness and greed so deep they tear themselves apart for power. They do not allow attachments to others, to any living thing which might tether them or hold them back. Their attachments are in the physical, in the bases of this world that they can control and manipulate to their own horrible will.”

He could not imagine, could not comprehend an evil so deep as to murder your own soulmate. It went against every fiber of his being, every atom spun into the latticework of his body and mind. He thought of every Jedi in the temple who bore their marks with such pride, arms and chests and faces bared for the world to see. It was their ultimate joy and pride, the greatest and most loving gift of the force, to allow a force user to find the other broken half of their soul.

He thought of the tantamount joy and exuberating relief that echoed through the force like a hammered gong when a padawan earned their soulmark; of the incredible and moving ecstasy he witnessed a year before when a rule of two found one another for the first time. The light side of the force is what made them Jedi, but he could not imagine any life caressed by the attentions of the force without its kindest benediction. The sacrifice—the selflessness of that kind of love, of the ability to share power and the other half of a soul is what marked a Jedi worthy, a true follower of the light. A dyad felt to him like light and sweetness itself—to consider anything else seemed beyond the limits of possibility.

But he thought of the duty and burden that came with such a blessing too, sometimes a terrible one. To him duty and honor such as that looked like emblazoned twin suns and shone like a star.

Anakin whispered, “what will you do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” he said, voice young and fearful, “it’s all the beginning of the prophecy isn’t it? You fought and killed a Sith as your soul trial and now you’re a Son of Suns. The dyad are supposed to bring an end to the darkness, aren’t they? That means you have to fight the—fight the Sith Empire doesn’t it?”

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed and he stared at the matt for a moment, aura gone muddled and unclear in the force. “I suppose so yes—though prophecies are anything but clear, it could mean something else entirely. Only the force knows what my role is, Anakin, and I mustn’t face it alone, not with my—not with the other half of the prophecy and all of the Jedi in the galaxy to stand against the darkness.”

He frowned. “Two risen sons when power crowned in light of day casts dark away. How is that not facing the Sith, master?”

Obi-Wan laughed, “you sound like Master Qui-Gon now, little one. The prophecy is very old, almost as old as our Order, since before the Old Sith Wars even. There are writings in the library from Exar Kun and Darth Revan on the prophecy, the Dark Brotherhood lived in fear that the prophecy might unfold during their time of power. We have waited thousands of years, Anakin, and who are we to say what the ancients actually foretold?”

Anakin was one of the few younglings who took a keen interest in their history classes, not because he was particularly scholarly like Obi-Wan, but because all the threads of the past seemed to weave towards one point, towards one path paved since the beginning of time. All of the great Sith wars, the Jedi civil wars, the battles of light and darkness, they all circled back to fear…and to hope. The light was built on hope, and faith that good and light could always conquer the dark. The Sith lived in terror of failure, of defeat and conquering. Every Sith Lord, every emperor and brother of darkness and fallen Jedi feared fate, feared the ancient prophecies might unspool during their own time.

Did these new Sith, this hotly forged empire know what they faced, that half of the prophecy lived and breathed with gilded binary suns branded into his skin? Did they know they faced Obi-Wan Kenobi, who burned brighter than a star in the force, and who was the kindest and bravest and most wonderful man he ever knew? He figured surely not, because he could not imagine anyone brave enough to face him with the knowledge beforehand. His master was the greatest Jedi to ever live, and not even a Sith Empire could ever stand a chance against him.


	4. Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amkanakini drew an astoundingly gorgeous portrait of [Obi-Wan with his soulmark tattoos!](https://himboskywalker.tumblr.com/post/619911913915236352/ohmygod-hes-gorgeous)
> 
> Spookyseahorse also posted a simply beautiful wip [portrait of Obi-Wan and his soulmark!](https://himboskywalker.tumblr.com/post/621505869163757568)
> 
> The song for this chapter is [I Will Be Your Knight.](https://open.spotify.com/track/1csiE4sCSlVcJ2G5mYId5m?si=FUj-uxJnQUWmiEKPPPWccA)

“I don’t want to go without you,” Anakin said fretfully.

Obi-Wan sighed and cuffed the top of his head outside of the _Crucible._ “It is not an experience meant to be shared, Anakin. To earn your soulmark and become a knight, to become the half of a greater whole, you must first face your own fears and struggles. A broken half of a whole cannot equally form a complete circle.”

Anakin glared at the docking ramp of the ship, where the architect droid waited for him along with Trilla, Knox, and Eldra, who were also wishing their own masters goodbye.

“I just don’t see why you can’t come along on the ship and just wait for us while we go off to the caves.”

Obi-Wan grinned at that, the small lopsided one he always made when he said something sarcastic or particularly scathing. “Ahh yes—I forgot, because we masters have so little else to do besides wait on our padawans hand and foot. Is there another way I can serve you besides waiting at your beck and call, perhaps I can wash your feet when you return?”

Anakin rolled his eyes and stuffed his hands in the deep sleeves of his robe, biting down the self-consciousness climbing up his neck that made him feel especially clingy and needy at the thought of leaving Coruscant without Obi-Wan. But he was always terrible at hiding his feelings from his master and Obi-Wan sighed, seeing past the annoyance on his face and putting a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Padawan,” he gentled, “you mustn’t fear the trial to come, you will pass your test and find your crystals.”

Anakin forced a smile in return. “Yes, master.”

“Just think of what is waiting for you when you do pass it, what you’ve been pestering me a whole year for.”

He took a deep breath and nodded, drawing on the strength of the force and the honeyed amber comfort of Obi-Wan’s presence in the bond. “I know,” he smiled small and real then, “I think it will be blue, like yours.”

Obi-Wan made an expression of fond exasperation but it was only proud affection he projected in the force. “Alright, you little terror, I will see you in two weeks, off with you.”

Anakin scurried up the docking ramp and made himself sit in the civilian common area, where there were bolted down tables and benches, equipped with hologames and in-screen data padds, though none took his interest as the other padawans settled in the area and the ship rumbled as it lifted from the temple’s docking bay.

He hadn’t been on a ship since Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan found him and his mother three years before, not for anything off planet, and the thought of travelling deep into wild space, lightyears away from the temple, from his mother and master, it made sweat prickle on the back of his neck.

“My master said the Jedi on Ilum are super weird,” said Knox.

“It is an ice planet,” Trilla offered, kicking her feet against the durasteel bench, hands tucked under her thighs, “lightyears from the other temples. I’d be weird too if I had to live in snow all the time in the unknown. I’d hope my soulmate was from another temple just to get out of there.”

“Yeah but Master Yoda says the force is so strong on Ilum,” said Eldra, “it must be super cool having all that kyber around. What do you think, Anakin, since you hear the force in the lightsabers so loudly?”

He shifted uncomfortably and wished, with a hurtful pang, that Obi-Wan were here with him. He wasn’t terribly good at chatting with the other padawans his own age. He spent so many years with those older than him and his own combat and force skills were already more advanced than his peers, it made things…awkward. He didn’t know how to dampen the obviousness of his own force abilities around the others, who didn’t understand his connection to it as he did. Obi-Wan understood how the force felt to him, its strength and power and noise, but Obi-Wan was special—different.

“It sounds noisy to me.” He thought on it for a moment and Eldra tugged at one of her lekku, a nervous habit she had when feeling antsy, though he didn’t understand why.

“But I’d be more worried about the cold,” he quickly added, “I’ve never seen snow before.”

It took them five days of lightspeed travel to reach the unknown region and dock on Ilum. When they trudged out of the ship to meet the small gathering of Jedi from the temple, the cold lanced through him like he had never felt. It took his breath away, the ice in his lungs aching sharp and piercing like a knife in his chest. He imagined space must feel that cold outside of a ship, so frigid and bleak and all-consuming.

“Welcome, little ones,” said Master Jaha’ti, “let us get you inside, before we have four frozen padawans on our hands.”

They shivered wretchedly and stumbled the short yet miserable stretch between their ship and the squat temple, nearly invisible amongst the whirling snow and wind capped ice. The Ilum temple did not have bright windows made of multicolored transparisteel and their halls did not arch high overhead in sharp tipped points as the Coruscant temple. To preserve heat, most likely, as all of the ceilings were low and the windows narrow slitted things which cast just enough light to illuminate the stone carved walls.

They followed Master Jaha’ti’s sweeping form and he kept to the back of the group, trailing behind to linger along the stone carvings, which depicted many of the same stories told in their own windows and murals. He tracked the histories and prophecies and finally his eyes snagged on the deep engraving of two robed figures clutching hands with suns eclipsed behind them. The sight of it made his heart pang, his reminder of his master even here and so terribly far away.

Master Jaha’ti put them in a warm and humid room which smelled of teas and spices and they sat on pillows laid across the stone floor to crowd around a grate of heated anthracite coals. Over mugs of sweet cream caf, the Ilum temple master carefully explained how they needed to clear the entrance to the ice caves in the morning.

“The first step of your trial is to clear the freshly fallen snow from the cave’s entrance. It is an old tradition that the padawans make their own way, without guidance, and find the kyber crystals which call to them on their own. When the four of you return with your crystals, we will guide you through the steps of building your saber.”

Anakin itched to shove away from the warming coals and move, to find his crystals and _build._ The others would need to be shown the steps of constructing their sabers, of fitting the power cells to the power conduit, to feeding the electrical circuiting to the kyber. They would perhaps ponder or hesitate on the construction of their hilts, on how they wanted the saber’s weight to balance, how they wanted the grip to fit in their hands.

He did not have to ponder any of these things, he knew exactly, each step, each rivet and piece of durasteel. He knew how he wanted to route his power supply too, with gold inlaid circuitry to better start and recycle the power conduit so that the saber’s strength would not dull, even after hours of impact. After all, he had spent three years examining the temple’s sabers, and Obi-Wan’s lightsaber in particular. He had even taken it apart once and fitted it back together with better wiring that made igniting the blade a half a second faster, much to his master’s confounded amusement.

He barely slept that night, tossing and turning in his bunk and wondering, with fear throbbing in his skull like a dull toothache, what his trial in the kyber caves would be. He didn’t know of any padawans who failed the trial of retrieving their kyber crystals and he certainly didn’t want to be the first. He could not bear the disappointment in his master’s eyes if he did, could not bear being the failed padawan of a Son of Suns.

But in the morning his fears sat less heavy in his mind, their weight crowded out by the more present issues of the hurtful cold and the exhausting labor of clearing the mounds of snow from the cave’s entrance. By the time the four of them dug out enough of the snow so they could shimmy through the gap between the impacted ice and roof of stone, sweat soaked the back of his tunic and plastered his padawan braid to his neck despite the cold.

Inside the cave they ignited their glowrods and the beams of light refracted off teal tinged ice stalactites and stalagmites that glinted like diamonds when caught in the artificial glow. The raging wind and whirling gusts of frigid air from outside was a distant thing in the sanctuary and respite of the cave. In this still place the sounds of their boots crunching against the snow and their heavy panting breaths twined with the crooning song of the force that clanged like a thousand, distant wind-chimes. Each individual tinkle—each particular trill of music, came from every shard and vein of kyber to harmonize into one ethereal song.

“Should we stay together?” Asked Knox.

Eldra fretted with her lekku harness and peered around in the low light. “Maybe not this close, but we shouldn’t wander too far, so that we cannot see the light of each other’s glowrods.”

Anakin tilted his own glowrod to the ceiling and examined the far above sparkles of light catching on translucent kyber. The deeper they delved into the cave, the warmer and more humid the air grew, so that sweat gathered on their foreheads and kept their braids catching against the sticky skin of their necks. When they reached a crossroads of three separate tunnels both Eldra and Trilla narrowed their eyes with odd expressions and veered away to travel down the far-right tunnel. He figured their plans to stick close were moot against the deeper calling of the force.

When Anakin and Knox reached the next intersection the clamoring of a thousand crystals’ resonances grew louder so that he felt their vibrations pass through him, like the tremors of a ship’s engine scuttling along its metal flesh. Knox made a curious sound when they came to the next crossing of tunnels and left Anakin alone amongst the crooning kyber, whose song felt far eerier when by himself.

He took a deep breath and followed the long cast beam from his glowrod, trudging deeper and deeper below the earth of Ilum and following the hallowing melody of the force. One voice in particular, grew in strength so that it called out above the others. Its voice sounded to him as golden and honeyed as the feel of his master’s force signature, just as warming, just as sweet.

“Anakin—”

He spun, tripping over his own feet in surprise to see Obi-Wan standing in the bright beam of his glowrod.

“Master? What are you doing here?”

“It was very pressing that I saw you, padawan.”

A cold feeling trickled down his spine and he flexed his hand against its grip on the glowrod. “Is it my mom?”

“No, your mother is fine. But the Council have come to a decision, Anakin.”

That cold feeling only grew worse, and he knew by the pinpricks in his cheeks that his face had gone pale. “What decision?”

“You must leave the temple, Anakin.”

“What?”

“You aren’t advancing fast enough, and the Council do not want a padawan lagging behind to be assigned to me.”

“Because you’re a chosen one?” He asked smally.

His master’s eyes darkened as he looked away from him then, seeming to come to a decision as he weighed his words. He looked older in the severe light, the lines of his face sharper. “I am embarrassed by you, Anakin. I asked them to remove you. You are not strong enough to be my padawan, be my friend or a knight, to be a Jedi.”

He felt frozen from the inside out, pale and staticky inside. “Where are you sending me?” He whispered.

“Where do you think?” He said, a dark glint entering his eyes. “Back to the ship we found you on, since you cannot seem to move past it.”

The air felt punched from his chest and he took in several gasps, shuddering against the searing hurt of the cold air taken so quickly into his lungs. Tears blurred his vision and he furiously swiped at his eyes, angry that he was revealing his hurt so openly in front of Obi-Wan. “Are you sending my mom away too?”

His mouth twisted into a disappointed frown. “Your mother is staying. It is only you who has not earned your place. Your mother is ready to move on from you, I am ready to move on from you, Anakin.”

He wept openly then, a sob breaking past his lips, “I—I’m sorry ma—master,” he choked out between hiccupping cries.

Obi-Wan’s frown deepened. “Did you really think that I would want a ten-year-old slave as a friend? Did you truly think that in the future you would be worthy enough to bear matching twin suns on your skin, that you could ever be the other half of me?”

“I’m sorry,” he wailed, “I know I’m not—I know I wasn’t born under two suns.” He dropped his glowrod then and put his hands over his eyes, chest heaving as he sobbed into his palms. “I know, master, I’m sorry—I know.”

“I am part of an ancient prophecy, young one, and a slave like you simply isn’t made of strong enough stuff to become a Jedi Knight, to ever pass a force trial and receive a soulmate, certainly not a soulmate of a foretold dyad.”

“I’m not a slave,” he cried, “please don’t send me back. I’m sorry I failed you master, but please don’t send me back.”

“You have failed me, Anakin, you have failed your mother and you have failed the memory of Qui-Gon Jinn.”

He went to his knees there in the snow and put his arms over his head, too grief stricken to say anything more. All of his worst nightmares had come true on what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of his life. It was a thing of beauty, finding a kyber crystal and forging the saber meant to stay with a Jedi knight for the rest of their life. It was one of the small benedictions of the force, one of its small yet loving gifts.

“Do you accept that we are sending you away? Do you understand that you must move on from us, Anakin?”

He didn’t, not at all. He did not understand how the Jedi could be so cruel as to send him away from his mother, how she could want him to leave as well. He didn’t understand how he was deluded enough to think his master cared for him, that he might be good enough to become a knight.

“I understand,” he whispered.

But only silence met his answer and he felt weighed and judged by it. But when he finally lifted his head with his heart in his boots Obi-Wan did not stare back, no-one did. He ached there with his knees in the snow, shaking and carved hollow but still he blinked at nothing. He realized, abruptly, that he had just faced his force trial. The thought did not comfort him, it still felt too real and he still shook with tears freezing against his cheeks. But even through the white noise crackling in his mind the voice from before crooned again and he craned his head back to see a glimmering chunk of crystal protruding from the cave wall, caught in the beam of light from his dropped glowrod in the snow.

He stumbled to his feet, feeling more shaken and unsteady than an animal just birthed into the world. The crystal still sang to him as he wrapped a quaking hand around it and snapped it from the rock in three clean chunks, without cracks or spiderwebbed fissures that might weaken their strength. They thrummed in his hand and then like ink spilling in water, the clearness of the crystals bled into brilliant sapphire.

* * *

“What did you guys get for your force trials?” Asked Knox.

“I saw that I don’t find my soulmate until I’m old,” Trilla said, glaring at the broken chunks of green kyber in her lap.

Eldra ran a thumb against the sharp edge of one of her own yellow, mottled crystals. “I saw a Sith—or I think it was a Sith, with red glowing eyes.”

There was a pause and he lifted his head, realizing they were all staring at him. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.

“What?” Knox rolled his eyes, “did you see that you’ll live in the shadow of a Chosen One?”

He clenched his first in his lap and gritted his teeth, keeping his eyes on the workbench before him, spread with durasteel parts, wires, power cells, and tools. “It’s none of your business.”

Master Jaha’ti swept into the room, arms crossed inside of the sleeves of his long robe. “I see all four of you returned with crystals, that is good-very good.”

He took the others through the first steps of putting together their hilts while Anakin tried not to feel irritated as he tweaked the conduit wires between his power cell and focusing lens.

Master Jaha’ti took notice that he was, in fact, not working on his hilt and drifted over to him, a curious look raising his pointed eyebrows. “I see your handle is already finished, are you certain of the design you have chosen? Perhaps some testing of its weight and balance is in order, this is a process of great importance.”

“No need,” he said, staving off more irritation, “the hilt has been designed for a year, I’m just adjusting my first power cell so that the current directs through the power conduit with less energy bleed.”

Master Jaha’ti peered down at him with an unreadable expression. “Young padawan, a lightsaber is only built with a singular Diatium power cell to direct through your focusing lenses and three kyber crystals.”

He couldn’t stave on the irritation any longer, his patience running short when he already felt so raw and frayed from his force vision in the cave. “Yes,” he said slowly, “but there is space in the pommel of the handle to fit a backup power cell. The kyber won’t draw on the second cell unless the conduit of the first one fails and then the primary focusing lens will automatically flip to the second input source. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, Master Jaha’ti, but my saber has been planned for a while and I can assure you, I know far more complicated mechanics and electronics than this.”

The tall Jedi master merely raised his eyebrows a little higher and then nodded. “Very well, I will see to the others.”

He worked in peace for a time after that, welding the power insulator to the hilt and then fitting the modulation circuitry and emitter matrix inside of the casing around the already set crystals, power cells and focusing lenses.

Eldra leaned from her own workbench to peer at the guts of his saber with a concentrated frown. “Is that gold?”

“It’s a superconductor. It will channel the energy from the cell cleaner so that the blade ignites faster and retains power better even after the plasma current is broken by impact with other blades. It will make the power cell last longer.”

Her frown deepened, “but why is there a third power cell there? You only said you needed the one backup.”

He sighed then and tried to channel the same patience Master Obi-Wan or Master Yoda or his mother gave him every day when he knew he pestered them with incessant questions. “It’s a discharge energy cell, so I can increase the power output of my blade.”

She nodded solemnly, “good idea,” and turned back to her own gutted saber hilt.

“No,” Master Jaha’ti’s amused voice broke through his concentration. “it is a popular misconception. It was the Sith who invented both the first lightsaber and the modern one which first relied off an inbuilt power cell and not the power packs worn in the ancient days.”

“Why even try to fight with one if you have to wear power cells on a vest and you’re connected by a cable?” Complained Knox. “Wasn’t it hard to move and fight like that?”

“It was very cumbersome, but the strength of a plasma blade was still incredibly powerful, even only used in short bursts during major battles. They were vital to how the Jedi Order fought during the Hundred-Year Darkness, the Great Hyperspace War and the Great Sith War, even before the power packs were done away with.”

“How can the Sith even have lightsabers,” asked Trilla, “when you must pass a force trial and the crystals only choose you if you are worthy?”

Anakin huffed as he fitted his pommel and capped his hilt with a final, grating click. “Did none of you ever listen to Master Yoda in the crèche? The Sith don’t use kyber, they make their own synthetic crystals, it’s why their blades are red ya’ nerfherder.”

Master Jaha’ti cast him a chastising expression but turned back to Trilla. “Padawan Skywalker is correct, young one, the many Sith Empires to have risen and fallen in the history of the Old and Galactic Republic have been many things, but seekers of power and control are always their constant. Even if a crystal could ever deem to choose them, the surrender of choice to something beyond themselves would be unquestionable. They forge their own crystals by their own making and under their direct control so that even the power of their lightsabers is routed through themselves and not the living force.”

The force went tense and somber between all of them and Knox puffed out a heavy breath. “Are they stronger?”

“The raw power of their blades is inevitably so,” said Master Jaha’ti, “but their harmony and balance with them far less so.”

Eldra glanced to him out of the corner of her eye and tugged at her lekku before turning back to her partially constructed saber. “Has the Ilum temple been training the knights here for the new Jedi Army?”

Master Jaha’ti put a gentle hand on her shoulder and sighed. “The concept is not new, young one, our order has maintained an army since we began over twenty-five thousand years ago, peace the last thousand years has merely dulled our edges. But yes, our knights are being trained for a greater Jedi army with the threat of a new Sith Empire.”

He thought of the fear in his master’s eyes when he returned from killing a Sith, thought of the hurt be bled into the force as if from a deep and un-healing wound. One Sith had caused enough damage, wreaked enough darkness. He couldn’t imagine how the Jedi from the Old Republic lived and endured, fighting against an entire Empire of beings who only sought power and death, so that even their own soulmates were an obstacle.

Anakin stepped away from his bench and backed away from the others, so that even if he horribly karked the circuitry up, the blast from the wrongly routed power cell wouldn’t hurt the others. But when he pressed the button along his silvered hilt, it only thrummed to life with a gush of power and lit a brilliant blue. He examined it closely, tilting the blade and stepping into simple katas. The energy seemed to conduct smoothly and the blade hummed low and even, its light constant and not falling to crackling or fizzing when he spun it, good, that meant his fiddling with the power cell held up.

Master Jaha’ti approached him and eyed the blade up and down, from pommel to the rounded end of the plasma blade with a slow smile lighting up his face. “Excellent work, padawan Skywalker, that is some breathtaking craftmanship, some of the best I have seen, in fact.”

He smiled at his blade and though his heart still ached from the ice caves, with a festering and inflamed hurt, he knew peace in that moment.

* * *

When they returned to the temple, he found his master in the training rooms, rolling around on the mats with padawan Secura while Quinlan Vos egged them on from where he stood by a rack of training sabers. Anakin stood beside him quietly as they watched Aayla put his master in a headlock before he somehow managed to thrash enough to roll her over his shoulder and throw her to the mat, lekku slapping loudly against the vinyl.

Quinlan winced and ran a thumb along the yellow soulmark on his face and then grinned down at him. “He’s winning now that you’re here, he was getting thoroughly throttled earlier.”

Obi-Wan stood, tunic drenched with sweat and brushed hair that looked in desperate need of a cut off his forehead. “Quit lying to my padawan, Quin.”

Aayla sprang up behind him and adjusted her lekku harness. “Now Master Obi-Wan, being a sore loser is no way to impart good Jedi values to us padawans.”

Anakin grinned and muffled a happy noise as Obi-Wan reeled him in by the back of his head for a brief hug, careful not to press him against the line of his damp tunic. “I take by the smile on your face and that you are not sulking in the force, that you have returned with a saber in hand.”

He pulled his lightsaber from his outer tunic and, swallowing down embarrassment, handed it to his master. Obi-Wan lit golden and brilliant in the force, pushing pride and happiness through their bond as he wrapped his pale hand around his durasteel hilt. He examined it, tilting it from side to side, peering along its length and then at the pommel.

Quinlan clapped him on the back. “It’s a mighty fine-looking hilt. Did the rewiring to the power cell work like you wanted?”

“Better,” he said as Obi-Wan ignited the blade. It lit his master and cast his eyes a luminous cerulean, his hair washed from copper to silver in its glow.

Obi-Wan grinned at him, his wide one that flashed all of his even teeth. “And blue just as you said, though no one is terribly surprised.”

He folded his hands behind his back and bounced on his heels, pushing down more embarrassment and eagerness all in one, though with how giddy he felt it probably leaked into the force and his training bond freely. “Do you like the hilt, master?”

Obi-wan disengaged the blade and handed his saber back to him with a fond smile and a playful tug on his braid. “It looks suspiciously like mine.”

All at once he thought of the ice caves and what the force vision told him, that he was embarrassed by him, that he, a former slave, had no place here as a chosen one’s padawan. He swallowed down sudden panic at the thought, that his master was embarrassed by an act like this, by his loving emulation. He realized, with sudden awareness, that this was a very childish thing to do.

“It does,” he said smally, embarrassment bringing heat to his face.

Obi-Wan’s face went stricken for a second and he put his hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “I am honored someone as skilled as you thinks my humble made saber is worthy enough to take inspiration from, padawan. You did brilliant work, Anakin, it’s truly beautiful.”

He firmly stamped down tears at that and shuddered out a deep breath, a little of the tenderness inside him lessening at the words. “Thank you, master.”

Aayla smiled at him. “Have you shown your mother yet?”

“I wanted Master Obi-Wan to see first.”

“Off you go then,” said Quinlan, “I’m sure she saw the ship dock and is waiting for you.”

Hours later, after his mother hugged him tight and petted his hair and told him how beautiful it was and after the other padawans and knights planetside in the temple congratulated him and the others on their new blades, Obi-Wan led him to the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

“Tell me,” he said, yanking off his boots and dipping his immensely pale feet into the pool of rippling water they sat by, “what has you hurting so badly?”

He tucked his own knees under his chin and watched the gold of his master’s soulmark catch the evening light out of the corner of his eye. “My force trial was—hard.”

“I worried it might be, the force in particular tests our fears on Ilum. The fears you face are a little more biting than many of the other padawans your age. I do not think the bite of your hurts are something to ignore, padawan, but as a Jedi it is something you must acknowledge and come to peace with.”

“What was your force trial, master?”

“My fear of inadequacy, of failing my master and staying a padawan or knight errant forever.”

He picked at a straggling bit of string on his boot and Obi-Wan sighed. “What is it you saw, Anakin?”

He tucked his face against his knees and muttered, “you, master, telling me I’m not strong enough to be your padawan, that the Council was sending me away back to be a slave again on the spaceship you found me on.”

“ _Anakin_ ,” he said, voice stricken and sorrowful, “padawan you _cannot_ think that—”

“I know,” he sniffled, “master, I know.”

Obi-Wan sighed and put an arm around his shoulders. “Fear is a—difficult thing. It is a part of us and something we all feel, but to be driven by our fears is what leads us astray, it guides us to unhappiness and imbalance.”

“I’m trying to let go, it’s just so—”

“—hard, I know. But the overcoming of these things is what makes us Jedi, what makes us knights. The emotional strength required of us is exceptional, have no doubt of that, but it is a choice we make, little one, every day.”

“Do you fight fear every day, master?”

“I do,” he sighed. “I fear failure still, and disappointing those I respect and follow. I fear failing you, I fear the darkness that may be coming. But my fears are not who I am.”

“Not who you are?” Anakin questioned confusedly.

“When you look at me, what do you see?”

He blushed then and looked away, fiddling with his braid. “You’re strong and brave and a good Jedi, you’re a good master. You’re bright and powerful and a Son of Suns.”

Obi-Wan squeezed his shoulder. “And yet I feel fear just as you, but that is not who I am. And that is not who you are, Anakin Skywalker.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rubs hands together for impending Sith shenanigans*
> 
> If anyone is boggled or confused by references to wars or other events from the Old Republic I made a [post](https://himboskywalker.tumblr.com/post/621462408151662592/so-im-a-bit-new-to-star-wars-and-i-had-zero-idea) that gives a basic timeline of all the Jedi/Sith Wars to the formation of the Galactic Republic.If anyone is further wondering what the hell is going on with a Jedi Army,than you can further read on the Ruusan Reformation in that post and [this one as well.](https://himboskywalker.tumblr.com/post/616402678321430528/sorry-to-bother-you-again-i-just-got-to-ask-about)


	5. Flush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the rise and fall of an empire thank god this chapter is finally up!Thank you guys for your patience for this one.I hit some writer's block for these transition chapters and then my computer hard-drive decided it had sacrificed enough and left the mortal plane.It was not shot for cowardice but only because it died in my arms. 
> 
> Obi-Wan's hair this chapter is specifically Ewan McGregor's hair in Shallow Grave,just for a gorgeous reference point.
> 
> Warning for this chapter:Underage masturbation, though nothing terribly explicit.

“Pick up your left foot more, you’re dragging.”

“I am not!”

“You keep catching your toes on the mat.”

Aayla lowered her practice saber and watched them argue with her mouth twisted in a little grin.

Anakin flashed hot with irritation and gritted his teeth. “I’m not dragging!”

Obi-Wan sighed and raked overgrown and sweat heavy curls out of his eyes that looked in desperate need of a cut, but he didn’t say anything else as Anakin lifted his saber against both his and Aayla’s. From her toes she sprung into a viperous attack and thrust her violet blade under Obi-Wan’s opened guard while Anakin attempted to distract him with an overhanded parry to expose the line of his stomach. It was an elementary tactic that his master deflected as easily as breathing. He lunged in an attempt to get behind Obi-Wan while Aayla locked his guard, though he nearly broke his neck tripping over his own feet as the sole of his left shoe caught on the sticky mat.

“Stop—stop,” Obi-Wan lowered his saber and raised a hand with a laugh, raking more fire burnished curls out of his eyes. The mop of overgrown ringlets made him look younger than twenty-four, though perhaps not as young as Anakin’s fourteen. Even still, he knew why his master grew out his hair like some Holonet star and it had little to do with vanity and everything to do with shrouding the gilded suns on his throat.

“I think I see the problem.” Obi-Wan disengaged his saber and slid to his knees, lifting Anakin’s boot and squeezing his toes where the leather pinched. He sighed and glanced up at Anakin with a fond expression. “You’re going through another growth spurt it seems. Why didn’t you say your boots were too tight?”

Obi-Wan dropped his foot and dusted his knees off when he stood, and Anakin flushed and glanced to the side. “I didn’t notice, master.”

Obi-Wan cuffed the top of his head. “We will get you some new shoes that fit properly, that should solve your problem.” He cast Aayla an exasperated expression. “Did your master have a race against time trying to make sure you didn’t outgrow your clothes before you could even get them on?”

Anakin flushed deeper and stared his overtight boots down, willing away the heat in his ears he knew manifested as a fluorescent red glow.

Aayla leaked open fondness into the force as she tossed a lekku over her shoulder. “No, but Anakin will outgrow me within the year I’m sure.” She narrowed her eyes at Obi-Wan in a gleeful expression. “Don’t tease too much, Master Kenobi, he’ll outgrow you too. Chin up, Anakin, it just means you’re turning into a man, that is what humans say, right?”

His ears burned even hotter and he cleared his throat. “I suppose so. Can we just continue the spar, I’ll make sure to pick up my feet more?”

Aayla sprang at him again without warning and they fell into the old and familiar rhythms of their sabers clashing, sending ripples of their sparking energy through the force. The dynamic of three versus two did feel different, livelier, more chaotic. It made his blood sing as their twin energies crooned to him, even with their saber’s weaker resonances because of the practice grade. They called to him, high and chiming like the soft tinkling of bells. A whisper of warning skittered down his spine and he bowed his back sharply, ducking beneath the broad swipe of Aayla’s saber to avoid a nasty burn against his neck.

She laughed brightly and they rotated in their spiraling dance across the training mats, using Obi-Wan as their gravitational axis point to spin around playfully as they thrust and parried, occasionally turning against each other. Only once all three of them dripped sweat and their attacks glanced from one another’s blades from lack of strength did they finally bow and rack the practice hilts.

Obi-Wan smiled at them, arms crossed over his chest, undertunic and curls darkened with sweat. “Very good, the both of you. I can see the new cohort training is beginning to take influence. Perhaps when Master Fisto can spare you again we may begin working on a cohort wall.”

“Do you think the battle cohort training will be a permanent change, master?” Asked Anakin.

“For the foreseeable future,” he said, mouth downturned, “it is a learning experience for us all. The Jedi have not trained as a true army since the fall of the Sith Empire.”

“Do you not approve, Obi-Wan?”

“You make me sound like a fussy old man, Padawan Secura,” Obi-Wan lilted, all toothy forward smile and dancing eyes. “But it’s not a matter of approving or disapproving, the Council knows best. I am simply worried we are being forced to rely on knowledge a thousand years outdated. But we must do what we can, even if it is training padawans with two left feet—”

Anakin huffed but put up little fight when Obi-Wan reeled him in by the collar to fondly ruffle his bristly head. “Always growing,” he said affectionately.

Anakin flushed hot and flustered, unable to look his master in the eye while he held him against his sweaty side and brushed gentle and playful fondness through their training bond. He swallowed down a sigh against the feeling and kept his mind as calm and empty as he could manage, though he answered his master’s fondness with his own.

“Master Windu mentioned that he might be bringing Anakin and I in to begin first cohort training?” Said Aayla.

Anakin perked up and looked to Obi-Wan wiping sweat from where it ran down his heat flushed face and darkened the neck of his tunic.

“Is that true, master? Does this mean I’ll get to saber train with you and the other knights?”

“It appears so.” He glanced to Anakin thoughtfully. “I expect this means we should begin sparring with your actual saber.”

He tried to school his expression into one of passivity so he didn’t look too overeager, but his master’s smirk told him he wasn’t fooled. Aayla left them to their training to find her own master and they trailed through the golden and honeyed halls on a hunt for new boots that didn’t make his toes ache.

“You know,” Obi-Wan said, “Aayla will be leaving the temple soon.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Master Fistu thinks she is ready to be made a knight errant.”

“Oh,” he said, stunned.

Obi-Wan gave him a knowing look. “She will leave soon on her first quest, I am sure. I suspect she will search out Quinlan, force only knows where he is right now.”

Since he and his mother’s arrival to the temple seven years previous, many padawans had graduated to knight errants and nearly as many knight errants had earned their soulmarks. They came hard won and often as a surprise, many in a Jedi’s least expected moment. Only the force knew the true test of a Jedi’s character after all. But the soulmarked knights, thus far, were all elder padawans, errants or acquaintances, or friends of Obi-Wan’s first and his by proxy. Aayla marked the first true friend to move on without him. It stung, oddly, and felt an awful lot like being left behind.

“I didn’t—I just didn’t realize it would be so soon

Obi-Wan put a light hand on his shoulder while they walked, lending him a brief moment of reassurance through the warm weight of his touch and the gentle caress of his force signature. “You must be able to part with the people you care about, padawan. She is ready to leave the temple and start her journey, you have many years yet, no matter how much you want to be rid of me.”

An indignant noise worked past his throat and his voice cracked halfway through it embarrassingly. “You know that isn’t true.”

“No,” Obi-Wan smiled and tugged on his braid. “But I know you are impatient to be knighted and earn your soulmark, you have been since you were seven.”

He eyed the glimmering binary suns against Obi-Wan’s throat, nearly hidden behind a curtain of copper curls and the high neck of his tunic pulled tight. It was not the Jedi custom to hide a soulmark, rather the opposite when it was the greatest blessing of the force. But the Son of Suns did not flaunt his twin, gilded brands. It made him ache as if a personal insult, though he knew his master couldn’t be the other half of his dyad —that the prophesied and worshipped image of the twin suns did not belong to him.

“Do you—do you not dream of meeting your soulmate?”

“Of course I do. But the force will give me my soulmate when I am ready and when my partner is ready, there is no use rushing it. We must live in the moment, not long endlessly for the future.”

Anakin side eyed him mistrustfully. That sounded like direct mimicry of Master Yoda, not the Jedi Knight who liked to swipe his feet out from under him in the training rooms. “I dream of mine,” he said, unable to hide the wistfulness from his tone. “Everyday.”

Obi-Wan froze for a moment, mid-step, and then seemed to catch himself. “Dear one—I can’t tell you anything that will make the waiting easier, we are both together in that. I do understand, but the force will give us our soulmates when we are ready.”

He didn’t want the force to give them soulmates—he wanted the force to give him Obi-Wan.

* * *

“Here I’ve hardly seen you in days and when you do finally come skulking about you look like a kicked lothcat.”

He kissed his mother’s cheek and sheepishly sat beside her on her low couch where she drank a steaming cup of tea. “Sorry, mom, Obi-Wan has been running cohort training drills.”

“Oh? With a face like that it hasn’t been history lessons with Master Windu, diplomacy briefs with Master Undi, wasn’t being forced to scrub the padawan billets toilets?”

“Ha,” he said.

“Darling, whatever is the matter?”

“Aayla is to be made a knight errant, she’ll be leaving the temple soon.”

“Ahh,” her teacup clinked against its saucer, “that cannot be surprising, surely? She is very talented and dedicated.”

“Of course not. She’s gona’ be a wizard knight—I just—all I can think about is how long I have to wait for my soulmark.”

She arched her eyebrows at him over the rim of her teacup. “Some of us wait longer than others, the force—”

“—Decides when I am ready. I know,” he muttered.

Her expression stayed the same as she took a delicate sip from her cup, eyebrows arched knowingly. She wore her long, dark hair in a braid over her shoulder that glinted with woven strands of silver. He liked the silver juxtaposed against the silken darkness of the braid, it almost seemed like jewelry, the threads of silver haloed her angled face and brought out the sun kissed gold of her skin. He recognized, in moments like these, that the same underlit golden glow clung to his own skin, that his hair, when given the chance to grow past its padawan cut, might frame his increasingly angular face just the same.

“It gets easier as you grow older. That doesn’t make you feel better now, I know. But my dear, you have such a long life ahead of you.”

He swallowed thickly and nodded to himself. There wasn’t a good way to say that he both longed and dreaded for his soulmark with every fiber of his being. How could anyone in the whole galaxy compare to his master?

“I’m sorry, I know you’re still waiting too.”

She put a hand over his where it rested against the couch. “It doesn’t bother me like it does for you. I am content to wait and I am content if I never receive my soulmark, that is the fundamental difference between us. Whether you like it or not the force will teach you to wait.”

“Doesn’t it get lonely? Don’t you get lonely, mom?”

She leaned forward to settle her teacup and saucer on the caf table. “No,” she said, with a sense of finality. “If the force deems me ready to earn a soulmark then I will be happy, but it has never been something I need, my love. I have you, and the love and fellowship of the Jedi here, I have peace, Anakin.”

Peace—peace felt, even after years at the temple, like such a gossamer and impossible thing. All the other Jedi reached it so easily, called to it and named it their anchoring point and resolution to face the darkness. But he did not know peace and he wondered if he ever would amidst the thrashing and tumultuous tempest of the force.

His mother patted him on the knee, still with that same smile. “But there are more present worries, I see Obi-Wan has gotten you a new pair of boots. Honestly, darling, isn’t that your third new pair this year? Where is this height coming from?”

He grinned down at his stiff and still shiny boots. “Sheer will.”

* * *

“Good—very good! Let’s go through it again but slower.”

Anakin mopped sweat from his face with the rough sleeve of his loosely woven undertunic and lifted his padawan braid from its plastered press against his neck. He took a moment to gulp in several breaths and to notice the tickle of a rivulet of sweat worming its way down his spine to soak the waistband of his pants.

“Master,” he said plaintively, “I’m starving.”

Obi-Wan answered with the raising of his saber and the goading motion of two fingers pointed at him in a bone deep familiar move. “Surely you aren’t giving in now?” He snarked, eyes dancing behind the spitting blue of his blade.

This marked their first match with real sabers and Obi-Wan seemed invigorated by it, lobbying especially playful barbs and luring Anakin with unusually aggressive moves that countered the Soresu he knew his master to practice so well. His muscles quavered from exhaustion and even as he lifted his own saber in the double fisted, signature move of Djem So, his hands trembled against the hilt of his lightsaber.

But Obi-Wan knew him, knew his restless energy and how hard he found it to sit still and stay present and mindful when the force lashed at him like waves on a rocky shore. After all, it felt much the same to his master, though he always described it differently; less of a storm and more of the eternity of space spiraling around him. Where Anakin heard the crashing of waves in his sleep, the force like sea water bubbling in his ears, Obi-Wan heard the throbbing white noise of a galaxy. The force chattered in his ears like the distant rumble of celestial interference on a ship’s comm.

So Obi-Wan knew that if he worked him to exhaustion so complete that he stumbled and sagged from it, that he could finally give himself to the noise and fall into moving meditation with the swings and clashes of their sabers. The sound of their blades’ crackling energies fed into the force’s symphony and the synchronized huffs of their breaths joined in as just another instrument so that his mind’s eye narrowed down to the crackles of their twin, sapphire blades and the golden tether of their training bond.

The world simplified then, to his and his master’s movements, to the drumbeat of his pulse in his ears and where his fingertips pressed against warmed durasteel. The new and exciting danger of real plasma blades only fed into the adrenaline gushing through his veins and painting the world in nothing but white static.

He took steadying inhales through it. An overhanded parry with the tight movement of his feet to counter the distribution of weight—a breath. The leftward dip of his waist to support his core tight parry against his master’s violent stab—a breath. The wasteful but equally as fun somersault he indulged to attempt an underhanded swipe at Obi-Wan’s low back—a breath.

They continued their dance of hissing sabers till Anakin practically stumbled right into his master’s trap just from sheer exhaustion. His mind had finally slipped from the calmness of blank and present meditation to the hyper awareness of how his arms and shoulders ached and he fell for an easy and childish faint. Obi-wan ducked so that his shoulder pressed against his sternum and he flipped him over his shoulder and slammed him to the mat with a loud slap.

He gasped for air driven from his lungs like a gaping fish, even as Obi-Wan flipped with him and pinned Anakin with his saber against his throat and his knees digging into his ribs. Obi-Wan held the heat of the saber to his neck until he regained his breath enough to wheeze out a pathetic, “I give.”

Obi-Wan leaned back, disengaged his saber blade and settled all of his weight on Anakin’s stomach with a knowing and impish grin. Anakin wheezed more against the pressure on his lungs and fought a horrid, full body flush from where his master loomed over him.

The thrum of the force, the energy in his veins and the sweat slick heat from their fight—all at once slanted into something feverish and insistent and before he could think to keep his face neutral his eyes rounded in terror and he flipped his master to the mat and leapt to his feet. Obi-Wan chuffed a startled laugh and bounced to his feet beside him.

“Alright,” Obi-Wan laughed. “You’ve had enough today, I see.”

He scooped up his fallen saber, disengaged the blade and clipped it to his belt all while trying to not look jumpy or like his hands shook. “Ahh—can I go eat now, master?”

Obi-Wan huffed and then flashed him a golden cast and crooked smile and his stomach flipped in response. “Yes, you weed,” he snorted, “go off and eat.”

He spun on his heel without hesitation, intent on darting out of the training rooms at breakneck speed.

“And Anakin—” Obi-Wan’s voice caught him and he froze for a moment, palms going sweaty with the mortified fear that his master knew what was wrong.

“Yes,” he said hesitantly.

“You did incredible today, I think Master Windu will be quite pleased to have you join the first cohort training.”

His stomach turned over on itself again in an odd squirming sensation and he bit down an embarrassing noise. “Thank you, master.”

He made a hasty retreat then, intent on escaping to the padawan billets and fleeing the scene of his utter mortification. In the middle of the day at least, the billets remained predominantly empty, especially the sonics.

The thing was, finding himself in embarrassing situations, hard and turned on and flustered when he shouldn’t have been, had become an odd sort of norm. He knew, from the ways the other younglings and padawans talked, that he wasn’t alone at least. And he knew, from the annual physical with a healer, that he fell well within the norm for a human going through puberty.

The older younglings and the padawans, late at night in their bunks, whispered to each other, mortified but intrigued, if anyone else touched themselves between their legs because it felt good. Anakin hadn’t until he was twelve, when he knew many of the others started long before him. Before the temple, life as a slave, amongst other people constantly on a ship, made him used to nothing for himself, even stolen moments. Even after coming to the temple, when the other younglings whispered to one another about how good it felt to touch, he didn’t quite understand the point of it.

When they grew a little older, some of the other padawans whispered about the things they thought about when they touched themselves, kissing, hands on one another. Knox, one night, whispered about how he watched a holo where a woman put her mouth on a man and sucked on him till he came, and Anakin ached, wide eyed and flustered in his bed for the rest of the night.

But still, in his stolen and private moments he didn’t think of much besides how good his hand felt. Maybe…once or twice, he thought of what it would be like to kiss Obi-Wan. Trilla said you could practice kissing by turning your knuckles sideways and mouthing at them and he would die before admitting it, but sometimes in his bunk he parted his lips over the knobby ridges of his hand, thought of his master’s tongue in his mouth, and touched himself.

But he knew he shouldn’t think of Obi-Wan like that, shouldn’t get heated and achy just imagining what a kiss might feel like. The healers could talk about growing up and this sort of thing being normal all they liked, but they all had soulmates, didn’t they? Somewhere out there, in the vastness of the galaxy and the turning wheels of stars, someone else would earn the force’s blessing to wear binary suns on their throat.

But telling himself that Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn’t his didn’t stop him from wanting, didn’t stop his stomach from turning over, tight and hot from the feel of his master sitting on his stomach and grinning down at him. And knowing that the Son of Suns could never be his didn’t stop him from climbing into the sonic and coming into his fist to the thought of his master pinning him to the ground again but sitting lower than his stomach.

He turned over on himself with embarrassment and horror afterwards and tried not to cry when he sat on the end of his bunk and pulled on his new leather boots. He gave in—after two years of telling himself he couldn’t be that horrible and selfish, he gave in after being pinned to a mat during a saber duel. He sniffled to himself for a handful of minutes but quickly wiped at his eyes when the billet door slid open.

Eldra started in the doorway and then pressed it closed quickly. “I didn’t expect to see you in the middle of the day. What’s wrong?”

He stared his boots down and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, embarrassed to be caught with red eyes and blotchy cheeks. Seen crying only brought memories of first coming to the temple, when nothing in the world made sense and the only solace he found came through the syrupy light of the hall of heroes and golden panes of the Sons of Suns.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

Eldra sat beside him without asking and pulled a turquoise lekku over her shoulder to tug absentmindedly. “I heard Master Windu wants to start us padawans in the first cohort training.”

“That’s what Aayla says.”

They sat in silence for a moment and then Eldra sighed. “I suppose that only means it’s getting worse. Can you feel it some days?”

“The darkness?” They peered at one another and he looked back down to his feet to avoid her knowing look. “Obi-Wan talks about it but I think I only catch hints of it sometimes. I’m sure it’s stronger after a soulmark.”

They fell back into silence before Eldra nudged him with her shoulder. “That’s what is bothering you, isn’t it, worrying about your soulmark?”

“Why is everyone trying to talk to me like they’re Master Yoda today?” He grumbled, rubbing at his neck.

She laughed and tugged again at her lekku. “Then that means I’m right. You aren’t very subtle you know.”

“Am I not?”

She eyed him; full mouth pulled into a wry expression. “About as subtle as a shaak.”

His cheeks went cold and pinpricky from blanching and he hunched, fighting the urge to just get to his feet and leave the billet without another word. Then he felt the light brush of fingers against his shoulder and Eldra ducked her head a little to meet his eyes and give him a gentle smile.

“I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry. Did you know Aayla has a crush on Quinlan?”

He jerked, startled. “What?”

She nodded and propped her pointed chin in her palm to peer at him with that same small smile. “Mhm, at least that’s what Trilla told me. Do you think you could be the other Son of Suns?”

He clasped his hands in his lap and swallowed thickly. “I know I can’t be.”

“You know or you just think?”

“I know,” he forced out. “I wasn’t born under two suns, I don’t fit the prophecy.”

“Oh,” she said, voice gone too soft, like she pitied him.

“So there really isn’t a point.” He made himself shrug flippantly. “He’s not for me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Anakin,we've finally hit the hard pining and suffering.You poor poor thing,it only gets worse from here.


End file.
